GreenBottle creates paper bottle for wine

GreenBottle, producers of the paper milk bottle, has unveiled a paper wine bottle set for launch into UK retail in 2012.

The Suffolk-based company has sold over 100,000 of its paper milk containers, tripling sales of Trewithen Dairy milk in Asda stores in the SE England since they became available in January 2011.

Like its milk counterpart, the new GreenBottle for wine consists of a fully recyclable or compostable paper casing. The same shape as a standard wine bottle, it contains a plastic liner, comparable to those used in bag-in-box wines, which, the company says, utilises about one third of the plastic required to make a conventional plastic milk bottle.

After use the bottle can be easily separated so that the paper element can be disposed of separately to the plastic.

The GreenBottle was conceived by Martin Myerscough following a chance conversation in 2006 with the manager of his local household waste facility, who said there was a particular problem with plastic bottles in landfill.
Myerscough went on to develop proprietary machinery, which, he says: “Will enable the paper bottle technology to be produced in industrial quantities, and cost effectively versus existing packaging.” The company has attracted “worldwide interest in the drinks, dairy and detergents industries” and is predicting moves into these categories globally in 2012.

While GreenBottle will cost the same to producers as a standard glass wine bottle, the major advantage will be in savings in transportation: a GreenBottle weighs 55 grams, compared to about 300-600 grams for a glass equivalent.
GreenBottle is also non-breakable and, the company estimates, has a carbon footprint of 10% of that of a glass wine bottle.

“The best thing about GreenBottle is that consumers just ‘get it’,” said Myerscough. “We’ve found that if you offer them the choice of a paper bottle or a plastic one they’ll choose paper every time. Choosing milk in GreenBottles enables consumers to ‘do their bit’ for the environment every day – and our sales show that ever-greater numbers of consumers are doing this.”

According to the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP) the UK buys in around 1.2 billion glass bottles a year, contributing more than 630,000 tonnes of glass to the UK waste stream, around 40% of which is disposed of as household waste.

1 November 2011 - Felicity Murray