Malta sets example in wine bottle reuse

Malta's wine industry collects more than 90 per cent of its bottles, reusing them time and again, according to George Delicata, managing director of Delicata Winemakers.

This is world leading performance. Wine businesses around the world manage to retrieve and reuse a mere three per cent of their bottles, with few exceptions.

This has significant environmental implications. When dealing with packaging waste, the mantra is the three Rs: reduce, reuse, and recycle. With each of the three Rs, the strain on limited resources is reduced, as is the potentially damaging effects of disposal.

With a simple bottle, there is little opportunity to reduce. The amount of glass required to produce a bottle robust enough to withstand transportation cannot be cut. But of the two remaining Rs, reuse beats recycle hands down.

This is a simple equation. Recycling costs energy, be it glass or plastic. The original bottle needs to be collected, transported to a recycling site, broken down and then melted before being recast. It also needs cleaning, and in Malta it will probably need to be exported. The volumes generated here do not necessarily justify a recycling plant.

So the bottles collected end up requiring a storage location before export - in a country with very little space to spare. Each of the stages costs money and consumes energy.

Now look at the reuse option. Yes, there is still the need to collect the bottles. They still need to be cleaned. There is a cost to these processes, but that is where it stops. The bottles are taken back to the winery for sterilisation and then refilled with wine. There is no requirement for long periods of storage before export and no cost of destroying them to recreate new versions.

"Malta does have an advantage here," Mr Delicata explained. "In a small country, distances are short. It is relatively easy to collect returned, empty bottles. But in larger countries, returns are a lot more difficult. Sending a truck from Milan to pick up bottles from Bari, for example, could end up using more energy and generating more CO2 than recycling in a local plant."

Mr Delicata emphasised that it is the Maltese wine industry as a whole that is achieving this degree of reuse. The Maltese may not drink as much wine as they used to: annual consumption now about 20 litres a head. But they are drinking a wider variety, with the floodgates now wide open to importation. But Malta's winemakers are holding their own well, regaining market share after an initial hit when import levies were removed.

The wine industry as a whole, and Delicata Winemakers in particular, has achieved this through the quality of the wine they produce. Mr Delicata pointed out that whenever his company's wines participate in exhibitions and fairs, he is always complimented on the quality.

But there are benefits to buying Maltese that go further. Yes, you consistently get good wine when you buy a bottle of Delicata, or a number of other local wines. But there is also an environmental benefit in that the bottle is returned to be refilled. "It does not end up on a pile at Maghtab, or anywhere else", Mr Delicata said.

And because the Maltese wines, now adhering to DOK and IGT specifications, are made from locally grown grapes supplied to Delicata by a long list of local farmers, the price of the wine contributes to the wellbeing of a lot of people, as well as to the maintenance of our embattled countryside, not to mention luscious green vineyards during our somewhat 'brownish' fields during summer.

The value and benefits of glass bottles is great. Malta has a long tradition of returning bottles for reuse, something which could be undermined by the introduction of plastic bottles. "This is one area in which the Maltese can be world leaders," Mr Delicata said.