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Reinventing The Bottle
4th July, 2024
Happy 4th July Food Junglers. For some, this is a celebration of independence, while, for readers in the UK, you might be waiting in eager anticipation of election results. Either way, the world of food and beverage stops for no-one!
Megan’s going to tell us about reusing glass bottles and how a new company, which has found a way to make recycling bottles even more sustainable, has caught her eye. Let’s dig in.
Hi there, Meg speaking.
Something I’ve noticed while working at a bar is the cavalier attitude with which glass bottles are discarded. I’ll take a look at the recycling bin on a busy Friday night and it will almost always be overflowing with good quality, single-use, glass bottles.
And being the inquisitive type, I decided to go down the rabbit hole of finding how many glass bottles are wasted in not just one bar, but in bars across the world.
The scale of the problem
It was reported that in 2020, the world produced 689 billion units of single-use, glass packaging. 70 billion of these were used for spirits and wine bottles and the average carbon footprint for packing spirits and wines was 550g of CO2 per bottle. That’s no small number.
And while recycling glass bottles is often advertised as a way to overcome such an inefficient practice, it’s not as sustainable as one might expect. Glass can only be melted down at incredibly high temperatures, which releases even more greenhouse gases than plastic or aluminium.
In fact, glass is four times more damaging than plastic, due to the high levels of energy it takes to produce it and then melt glass bottles down for reuse.
An alternative solution
Working behind the bar I have frequently found myself reaching the end of many spirit bottles. On one occasion, for example, having panicked as I thought I had finished the last of our rum, I was pointed in the direction of a huge green 4.5 litre container worth of this stuff! I had never seen anything like it.
ecoTOTES in action
It turns out that a small, Singapore-based company, called EcoSpirits, is trying to solve the very problems associated with glass recycling that I outlined above.
Simply put, EcoSpirits fills these huge green vessels - ecoTOTES - with various types of alcohol at a designated bottling plant, after which they deliver them to various drinking venues. And, when the vessels are emptied, the company collects them to be refilled.
If it sounds simple, that’s because it is. I’ve never seen anything like this before. EcoSpirits are trying to create a circular economy in which there is a low waste distribution of spirits and wine, minimising how many bottles - glass or plastic - we throw away.
The big picture
To someone working in the beverage industry, this is much more than a nifty gadget and I wouldn’t be talking about one company if I didn’t wholeheartedly believe in their mission.
EcoSpirits is reimagining the way we distribute alcohol in the food and beverage industry. Instead of mindlessly throwing away bottles, we could have yet another way to make our landfills just a little less full.
Most excitingly, though, some of the biggest names in the beverage industry seem to see what I see. Two months ago, Pernod Richard - owner of Beefeater London Dry Gin, Havana Club, and Absolut Vodka - partnered with EcoSpirits for a five-year deal, meaning that some of the most well-loved beverage-makers will use a little less glass too.
On top of this, EcoSpirits confirmed a deal with Bacardi and Carnival Cruise, last month, to bring ecoTOTES onto more cruise liners in the United States.
Considering just how many bottles we waste and how much energy goes into producing them, making ecoTOTES mainstream will be crucial in solving such an issue.
Concluding thoughts
I have certainly made it clear that I am very excited about what EcoSpirits is doing. But, more than that, I love how simple the idea is. It’s scalable, while also saving space and time for bartenders who are trying to rummage through countless bottles to serve customers on a Friday night.
Refillable vessels of alcohol are not just the dream of any bar, but the dream of any eco-warrior who wants to see less waste in general. And, with the support of some of the biggest brands in the beverage industry, I’m looking forward to seeing this side of the circular economy go mainstream.
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