Further research led him to Chris Ronson, who was a principal in Evergreen Glass, Inc., one of two bottle-washing operations in the 1990s that sold nearly a half-million cases of reused bottles annually. Ronson’s experience helped Stephens and company CFO, Bill Angeloni, put together a strong business plan that was used to raise more than $3.5 million.
The concept was simple. The management team’s goal was to attract investors from three distinct groups: material recycling facilities (MRFs), which could provide an almost unlimited supply of wine bottles; wineries that were large enough to ensure sales success; and trucking companies that could help move bottles throughout the market area. With four of the largest MRFs in Northern California; wineries including Sutter Home, Parducci and Kendall-Jackson; trucking company giant Biagi Brothers; and lots of friends and family, Wine Bottle Renew achieved its financing goals and launched officially in September.
Nationally, more than 70 percent of all wine bottles end up in landfills. By using Wine Bottle Renew’s process for sorting, washing and sterilizing bottles, many of these bottles can be reused, cutting back millions of metric tons of CO2 annually. While traditional recycling, particularly in Northern California, has been very successful in keeping bottles from landfills, there’s a carbon footprint savings of nearly 90 percent over recycling by reusing wine bottles. Once sorted and cleaned, wineries can save from 20 to 40 percent on the prices they currently pay for new bottles.
How it works
The recycling process starts when bottles are brought to Wine Bottle Renew’s processing facility in Stockton, California, by MRFs and from wineries’ production facilities and tasting rooms. The bottles are then sorted using a German-manufactured machine that can separate bottles by style, color and size. More than 500 types of wine bottles are available on the market today, but Wine Bottle Renew intends to sell only the top 100. The rest will be cleaned, sorted by color, crushed and sent to bottle manufacturers as clean cullet to produce new bottles. Once the bottles are sorted, they’ll be available for sale on the company’s website, and its wash-to-order program will ensure customers get the best and cleanest bottles in the marketplace.
There are many ways for wineries to reduce carbon emissions. Those that currently send their glass for traditional recycling can now get them to a local MRF at a premium and, in the process, significantly lower their carbon footprint. One Napa winery recently conducted an audit and determined that designating its bottles for reuse instead of recycling would result in carbon savings equal to taking 291 cars off the road each year. Taking it one step further and using Renew Bottles would more than triple that number. The winery is now conducting an independent review to verify these numbers.
As of July, Wine Bottle Renew was stockpiling bottles and had already collected nearly 250,000 cases with more than half a million cases expected, when the sorting and washing operation was fully functional in September. The four largest suppliers include Sutter Home, Constellation Brands wineries and MRFs in Napa and San Joaquin counties. Wine Bottle Renew provides special bins for customers to store bottles for pick up by local MRFs.
Stephens says, “Retailers such as WalMart and Costco are stressing sustainability in packaging and, with wineries, the bottles are 60 percent of the total carbon footprint of a bottle of wine. As for pricing, savings for large wineries will be in the range of 10 to 20 percent and smaller wineries, particularly those that use higher-quality bottles, will save considerably more.”
Clean inside and out
Another useful service in the Wine Bottle Renew lineup is wine bottle de-labeling—for both empty and full bottles. Many thousands of cases of wine need to be decanted, for a number of different reasons, and while the wine is saved, the bottles are disposed of and often end up in landfills. With Wine Bottle Renew’s label removal process, these bottles can be saved and reused at a substantial savings.
Wineries also occasionally need to remove labels from full wine bottles. Regulatory labeling requirements, poor quality labels and the need to remarket wines are just a few of the reasons wineries need this service. Wine Bottle Renew’s patented, full-bottle label removal and sterilization process will remove even pressure sensitive labels at the rate of 1,000 cases per day—and it’s mobile.
