Owens-Illinois Asks, ‘Bottle of Red...or Green?’
Print
E-mailOwens-Illinois Inc. (OI), a manufacturer of glass containers, is using an innovative packaging process in the Asia-Pacific region to make wine a little greener. The company’s Lean and GreenTM bottles have the classic silhouettes of traditional wine bottles but are 18 percent to 28 percent lighter, making them eco-friendly from production through consumption, explains Greg Ridder, president of O-I’s Asia-Pacific operations. “We’re keeping the bottles almost indistinguishable from their predecessors,” he says. “It’s a lot more eco-chic than eco-ugly, not stumpy like some beer or milk bottles.”
The “lightweighting” trend, O-I says, has been sweeping the Australian wine market since May. An innovation in the production process allows the company to press glass with a mechanical plunger, rather than blowing it with air alone, creating a more uniform product.
“The bottles save nearly 20,000 tons of glass packaging and 11,000 tons of carbon dioxide per year,” Ridder says. “They are slightly smaller, so our customers can ship 6.5 percent more bottles in a container, which also saves freight costs.” Ridder says that supermarket chains are starting to specify that they want lighter-weight containers. “Informed consumers want to know they’re making responsible environmental choices,” Ridder says, “and [the bottles are] 100 percent recyclable.”
The award-winning technology is expected to expand beyond Australia. “We go where the wine markets are: California, France, Italy, Spain,” says Ridder. “It won’t surprise me if you see Lean and Green used in the U.S. market in the not-too-distant future.”
