Did you know that standard wine packaging, including the bottle and the process, is 42% of the wine’s total carbon footprint? That statistic is exactly what inspires Erica Landin-Lofving, Chief Sustainability Officer at Vintage Wine Estates to explore alternative packaging. Lightweight bottling positively impacts the full circle sustainability of wine from saving money on glass and transportation to the quality of work for the people lifting cases to less wear and tear on equipment. Erica covers challenges and solutions related to all types of alternative packaging (wine in a bag, wine in a box tetra pak, lightweight glass) including choosing the best packaging for your brand, quality signaling, getting leadership to buy in, what changes will be most sustainable, and educating consumers. References: 171: How to Farm Wine Grapes for Climate ChangeAlloy Wine Works How Climate Changes will Change the Wine ClimateIs Wine in Cans Your New Favorite Format? SIP CertifiedThe Changing Landscape Of Sustainability (Video) Vineyard Team – Become a Member Vintage Wine Estates What does a sustainable water strategy look like in the wine industry? Why is sustainability now not a choice but a necessity? What does it mean for wine businesses? Get More Subscribe wherever you listen so you never miss an episode on the latest science and research with the Sustainable Winegrowing Podcast. Since 1994, Vineyard Team has been your resource for workshops and field demonstrations, research, and events dedicated to the stewardship of our natural resources. Learn more at www.vineyardteam.org. Transcript Craig Macmillan 0:00 My guest today is Erica Lofving. She is Chief Sustainability Officer with Vintage Wine Estates. And we're going to talk about sustainable wine packaging today. Welcome to the podcast. Erica. Erica Landin-Lofving 0:09 Thank you happy to be here. Craig Macmillan 0:10 You have done a lot of work on sustainable packaging. It's obviously an area that not only you're interested to, but there's a major component to the work that you do with with Vintage Wine Estate. How did you get into it? What is your interest? What kinds of things you've worked on recently? Erica Landin-Lofving 0:24 Well, I first got into sustainable packaging, maybe six, seven years. Back when I was still living in Sweden, I'm Swedish. I was consulting for the Swedish wine monopolies, Systembolaget. They are possibly the biggest buyer of wine in the world. And they have sustainability as a core issue. And they started lifting the packaging, and did lifecycle analysis together with the other Scandinavian monopolies and saw that packaging bottling and the process of doing it was up to 42% of the total carbon footprint of a wine, which is huge. Of course, they started focusing on on that because of course being big buyers, they can require changes in packaging of their buyers. So they launched projects on lightweighting bottles and alternative packaging, which they are still very strong and probably leading in the world. So that's that's when I got interested at that time, there was almost no discussion about packaging as part of sustainability and wine. We talked vineyards, vineyards, vineyards, maybe a little bit of winemaking, but packaging got ignored most of the sustainability certifications around the world don't even mention packaging, or didn't at least at that time. Actually, that was my project for the monopoly. I went through basically all the sustainability certifications around the world. Comlpex job. Let me tell you that. Craig Macmillan 1:39 Yeah, I guess. Erica Landin-Lofving 1:41 So of course, when I started at Vintage, I, you know, packaging was one of my key topics that I want to bring up. It was also really interesting to see we did a survey last year when we set our strategy I've been with Vintage for a year and a half. So one of my first things was to start collecting the information called a materiality analysis, basically pinpointing which areas are key sustainability areas. And as part of that, we did a survey in house and a lot of our staff were also interested in packaging, primary secondary packaging, and then of course, the waste of incoming packaging. So that that became one of our core core topics, and a very exciting one to be to be working on. Craig Macmillan 2:22 For those of us who don't know what to what kind of companies of Vintage Wine Estates, what do they do? Erica Landin-Lofving 2:28 Oh, yeah, Vintage Wine Estaes is a group we own 13 wineries, I believe and have 50 brands on top. Plus we do contract production for for external brands. We went public. Last June, June 20. June 22. It or is it 20 this year? Craig Macmillan 2:47 Yeah. Oh, that's right. No, that's right. No, I do. Yeah. That was kind of a big deal. Erica Landin-Lofving 2:53 It was a big deal. There aren't. Yeah, there aren't that many public public companies. So year and...
