For The Love Of Port

Only in America do we have every shipping container of wine lined with styrofoam. I love the thermal and protective nature of styrofoam and I rarely ship any wine without styro myself. Call me a hypocrite.

When the State that I live in, does not have ANY method for collection or recycling the styrofoam, it winds up in a land fill, better known as a dump. Since styrofoam has the half life equivalent to our Sun, I wonder how much of this stuff is produced and discarded in the USA each year? I know that in a good year, I find a way to accumulate 30-100 shippers of different sizes.

Here in the USA, styrofoam shippers come in these sizes:

1. 375 ml x 6 bottles
2. 375 ml x 12 bottles
3. 375 ml x 24 bottles (I have never owned this size but believe it exists)
4. 750 ml x 1 bottle
5. 750 ml x 2 bottles
6. 750 ml x 3 bottles
7. 750 ml x 4 bottles
8. 750 ml x 6 bottles
9. 750 ml x 12 bottles
10. 1.5 L x 1 bottle
11. 1.5 L x 2 bottles
12. 1.5 L x 3 bottles
13. 1.5 L x 6 bottles
14. 3.0 L x 1 bottles
15. 5.0 L x 1 bottles
16. 6.0 L x 1 bottles
17. 12 L x 1 bottles

Note: I certainly may have left one or more sizes off the list, regardless,
... the fact that there are at least 17 unique sizes of styrofoam that accompanies nearly every wine shipment made in America (besides OWC lots) is mind blowing. If we were to guage the American wine lovers that post on the WS, Squires', Robin Garr, FTLOP (and who knows how many others) and figure an average 10 styro shippers worth apiece, in varying sizes ... that is a heck of a lot of styrofoam. Given every wine shipment from mailing lists to retailers to auction houses to wine clubs and so on ...

Can you guess how many years at the current rate of US wine shipping it would take to fill the land mass (with styro) that today houses 40 million people in California?

In the UK, where Styro shippers are much less common (most shipment is done in plain but sturdy card boxes) the small number of Styro shippers tend to get re-used and re-cycled through the good intentions of the wine consumers.

Much of the wine that I have in off-site storage is packed into Styro containers before it goes.

However, where I live in the UK there is also no way to re-cycle expanded polystyrene. However, the local authority does what it has to do in the last resort before landfill and reclaims the energy from the shipper - it burns it in a gas enriched turbine generator :idea:

Alex

PS - no idea how long it would take for the rest of the US to fill California with Styro shippers.

I need a recycled 12x750 shipper. Never seen one at the dump

Are the styrofoam shippers suitable for long-term wine storage? I seem to remember reading that there was the possibility of chemicals outgassing from the styrofoam and getting into the wine. Urban legend?

Gary

I'm happy that I've never seen any of these in Quebec and Ontario.

I tried getting a double styro shipper when I was in San Fransisco to ship my two important bottles home ('94 Vesuvio and '77 Taylor) but could only get the "floating" cardboard ones in the store I was in. I was actually disappointed because I figured the Styro would protect the wine a bit better. Fortunately, these bottles suffered no damage in transit.

Too bad I can't say the same about my 1976 Niepoort Colheita, which did NOT survive the same trip. Original thread here.

Todd