I came across an interesting concept while reading an article online; is it better to recycle or re-use an item?

The article, “Bottle Blues” by Alastair Bland on the Bohemian.com website focuses on the soon to open wine bottle re-use business. Bruce Stephens is the force behind this new business. He believes that it is much better to re-use wine bottles than to recycle them. To that end his company, Wine Bottle Recycling, has installed advanced machinery to sort, remove labels, wash and sterilize wine bottles. The concept of re-using wine bottles has been tried before. However, the technology was not available to make it successful for a business.

Bland quotes Stephens, “The public has to be aware of what the glass industry has been doing. Getting us all to recycle and think we’re saving the world is just duping the public.” Bland notes that Ronson, a partner at Wine Bottle Recycling believes, “that recycling is hardly different than buying new bottles. What does recycling accomplish? You’re still melting material at extremely high temperatures and remolding it. All you’re not doing is taking silica sand from the earth.” So it appears that recycling wine bottles creates about the same carbon footprint as making new bottles.

Are re-using bottles a potential answer? While traveling in Wisconsin we learned that in that state wineries are not permitted to re-use wine bottles. Are there other states that prohibit the re-use of wine bottles? Home winemakers re-use wine bottles, why shouldn’t wineries?

If this topic interests you be sure to read the full article by Alastair Bland.

Cheers, Kathy