Since the post-war boom years, packaging has been growing ever bulkier. Nowadays, consumers seek more virtuous modes of consumption and distribution, for both economic and environmental reasons. More and more options are now available.
With the holiday season almost upon us, we’ve asked ourselves how consumers can enjoy wine or spirits without generating waste.
Help is at hand! In Montreal, you can find a varied selection of wines and spirits in bulk at Vin en Vrac.
How does the concept work?
Wines are stored in elegant stainless steel vats. Just as in the wine cellars of yesteryear, you can purchase a set of bottles on site or bring your own. If you bring your own bottles, they must be clean, free of commercial labels and in standard 750 ml or 1 L formats. (The store’s staff reserve the right to refuse to fill a client’s bottles if they consider them unsuitable.) You then move on to the filling stations of your choice. Once you have filled your bottles, the time has come to seal them with an elegant and easy to use cap.
Buying wine in bulk is an economical and environmentally friendly solution:
It saves on packaging and cuts the cost of transporting products to the store. The same bottles can be reused every time you fill up. Reducing packaging has a direct impact on greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption (production, transportation, recycling…) and the quantity of raw materials required. Recycling bottles is good, but reusing them in a short circuit is an even better option. Bulk sales significantly reduce the amount of CO2 emitted during the restocking process. Additionally, it takes far less water to wash a bottle than to manufacture a new one. Less packaging is discarded, transported and recycled. Refilling old bottles also helps to improve our recycling system. In Quebec, glass is mixed in with other recyclables such as cardboard and metal, and this commingled collection makes it extremely complex and costly to separate the materials at the recycling plant. Moreover, glass recycling is seriously flawed, since a mere 14 % of the glass that enters the recycling stream is actually recycled, according to Recyc-Québec’s 2015 report. Glass containers often break and their contents soil the other items in the recycling bin, thus increasing the risk of injury to the workers handling them.
