New company aims to reuse wine bottles

Every Tuesday on the BottleBlog, we'll focus on interesting or exciting industry news from here in New Jersey, to the valleys of California, to the vineyards of New Zealand. Today, we learn about a company that's aiming to "green" the wine industry.

New company aims to reuse wine bottles
by Paul Franson/Napa Valley Register

All of us over a certain age can remember returning heavy Coke bottles to be cleaned and refilled. In many parts of the world, that’s still the norm for soda, beer and even wine bottles.

Here, the process was generally abandoned because consumers considered it inconvenient, and new glass and shipping were cheap.

The earth has changed, however, and we now recognize that reuse is a lot more environmentally friendly than even recycling bottles and cans into new containers.

CEO Bruce Stephens of new Wine Bottle Renew, which is cleaning bottles for reuse, says the process of washing a wine bottle for reuse generates less than 5 percent of the carbon emissions created in the virgin production

He says an estimated 60 percent of a wine’s carbon footprint is in the production of the wine bottle. Using a Renew bottle reduces that production carbon footprint by up to 95 percent.

Renew hopes to exploit the new interest in saving the environment and make money at it. Wine Bottle Renew has started collecting and cleaning wine bottles for reuse by wineries.

Stephens said it has overcome two major obstacles that doomed earlier attempts a few years ago to reuse bottles: hard-to-remove labels and the slight variations among similar bottles that disrupted delicate bottling lines.

He said they have solved those problems with new label-removing technology and precision automated scanning equipment.

The business has offices and a logistics center in American Canyon and is collecting bottles for cleaning at its 92,000-sq.-ft. facility in Stockton. The company’s product is called a Renew bottle.

Wine Bottle Renew will processes pre- and post-consumer wine bottles through a sophisticated process of sorting, inspection, label removal, washing, sanitation and final quality inspection.

They are expecting delivery of their washer by Nov. 13. The state-of-the-art bottle washing system is approved by the California Department of Health Services. It utilizes high temperatures and specialized environmentally safe solutions to clean and decontaminate the bottle.

The company has been collecting excess bottles from wineries as well as tasting rooms and events. Stephens expects eventually to work with restaurants and waste collection services as well. He has 3,000 collection bins out and eventually expects to process 2.5 million cases per year.

Napa County Supervisor Bill Dodd is president of the company. He worked in Diversified Water Systems, DBA Culligan Water, before acquiring it and ultimately selling it to U.S. Filter Corp.

The company’s investors include wineries such as Hall, Kendall Jackson and Sutter Home, material recycling facilities like Napa Recycling and trucking companies like Biagi Trucking and VinLux Transport. Upper (Napa) Valley Disposal & Recycling is a collection partner.

Wine Bottle Renew will launch its mobile label removal service and decanting/disgorging services next week at the Green Wine Summit.

The bottle inventory is increasing drastically as more and more wineries and their tasting rooms are coming online.

The company is actively looking for high-quality pre-consumer wine bottles. To facilitate collection at wineries, it supplies plastic collection bins to store wine bottles for pickup by the local MRF. The collapsible bins measure 4 by 4 by 3 feet and hold approximately 500 bottles.

This article was originally published on November 5, 2010 in the Napa Valley Register