The Carbon Impact of Shipping Wine
From Dr. Vino's Website
In May, National Geographic published a small expose on “The Toll of Wine”. The article is based off of research by Pablo Paster (Climate Check) and Tyler Colman (Dr. Vino). Transport tallies for the shipment of a 750 mill. bottle of wine are estimated for shipping and trucking from Napa, U.S., Sydney, Australia, Bordeaux, France and Santiago Chili to L.A., Chicago and New York city.
The Results:
Trucking from Napa to NYC has the largest impact at 4.4lbs/ bottle shipped where as shipping from Bordeaux, France to NYC has the smallest impact at 0.3lbs/ bottle shipped (Yes, this is even smaller than trucking from Napa to LA which equals around 0.6lbs/bottle shipped).
So, it is clear that trucking is a lot less efficient than shipping but this doesn’t necessarily mean that you should import all of your wine. Shopping for local wine (as well as food) is a great way to reduce your carbon footprint. But, if you must get a Pot de Bordeaux, a bottle of Calistoga, a flagon of Yellow Tail or a carafe of Casas Del Bosque delivered to your door, Greenshipping is a great way to offset those emissions!
Here are links to the study and comments about the article:
