Port packaged in Plastic? Say it ain't so!

[Roy Hersh]

Besides the hit to the ecological footprint ... what do you think if Port was produced in this type of container?
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-w ... 7329.story

[Eric Menchen]

Sounds perfect for pink Port

Seriously though, can someone explain how it is environmentally more responsible? I understand the weight and shipping thing. But plastic comes from oil (this isn't PLA I presume, and even if it were, that's just a two step process from oil, at least in N.America), and is just marginally recyclable. They can recycle plastic into other things, but they can't take old plastic bottles and make them into new plastic bottles. Glass comes from incredibly abundant silicon dioxide, and is fully recyclable as far as I know.

[Moses Botbol]

No age indicated port in plastic for me. Well, perhaps stuff in t-corks could be done in plastic. I would rather have port in a box that can be dispensed over months rather than a plastic bottle- if we are to go down that road...

Port must retain some level of tradition. The bottle, capsole and cork should stay the same for Vintage Port.

[Peter W. Meek]

The problem with plastic is that most plastics "outgas" various things, primarily VOCs and the plasticizers (which keep them flexible). I can't help thinking that these won't add to the proper taste of port when the outgassing has a long time to take place.

Also, do we want to trust valuable vintage port to a container that will become more and more brittle over the years? Have you seen any plastic item over 50 years old that didn't threaten to crumble when handled?

A glass bottle is essentially inert. A highly acid content can leach out certain things (like lead from a high-lead glass) but in the bottle the main causes of change come (or go) through the stopper. Stoppers have been discussed elsewhere.

On the subject of recyclability: the proper use of oil IS feedstocks for plastics and other materials. Complex carbon compounds are a limited and valuable resource. Burning them for BTUs should be outlawed. Once they are burned they cease to exist except as pollution. Plastic can be recycled to some extent, and will be more-so in the future.

(I expected at least a few groans over my new sig.)

[Eric Ifune]

One problem with glass is the enormous amount of energy it takes to make or even to recycle.
I have no problems with Port, or any wine for that matter, which are not to be aged to be bottled or boxed in plastic.

[Eric Menchen]

Well, one of my local breweries pioneered craft beer in a can. Wine not?

[Jonathan S]

Well, one of my local breweries pioneered craft beer in a can. Wine not?

Ha, ha... I'll tell you wine not, Eric. Some of us are traditionalists, and the mere thought of changing the bottle from glass to plastic sends shockwaves through our bodies. That's wine not! Okay, I'll stop wineing now... I mean, whining.

[Glenn E.]

One problem with glass is the enormous amount of energy it takes to make or even to recycle.

I could swear that I read somewhere that the only recycling that makes sense from an energy/profit point of view is aluminum. The artical said that glass is basically just a break-even proposition, and that paper and non-aluminum metals actually use more energy to recycle than new manufacturing.

Of course, that's just one aspect of recycling. It still makes sense to recycle paper so that we don't have to cut down more trees, etc.

I really don't like the idea of Port being packaged in plastic... plastic's just not a good long-term storage option for the reasons already stated.

[Peter W. Meek]

One problem with glass is the enormous amount of energy it takes to make or even to recycle.

I could swear that I read somewhere that the only recycling that makes sense from an energy/profit point of view is aluminum. The artical said that glass is basically just a break-even proposition, and that paper and non-aluminum metals actually use more energy to recycle than new manufacturing.

Of course, that's just one aspect of recycling. It still makes sense to recycle paper so that we don't have to cut down more trees, etc...

95% of the cost of aluminum is the electricity required to wrest the metal from the ore. The cost of melting it for casting or the energy to fabricate the final product is small by comparison. Recycling is a cheap way to get raw aluminum. With glass it is more like 50-50. Sand is cheap, so scrap glass has a hard time competing. The main benefit (to society, as opposed to glass maker$ and buyer$) is that we don't have to find a place to store all the used glass in landfills. Same with cellulose (paper): raw material is relatively cheap; paper can be made from plantation wood (unlike fine woodwork); the benefit is keeping it out of landfills.

Iron and steel: some scrap steel is needed to make new steel but there must be some economic value to recycling or why would China be buying up so much of our recycled steel? Pure copper scrap is very valuable, but dirty copper and copper alloys much less so because it's hard to clean out the impurities, and when you need pure copper, you need it pure. Plastic falls into this category: the raw material is scarce and getting scarcer. Most plastic is easy to recycle, but you have to start with pure scrap of a single kind of plastic, which is hard (expensive) to sort from the waste flow.

My dream is that when people are setting up house as adults they would acquire or be given a set of glass containers of many different shapes and sizes. When they go to the store for groceries (or wine), they would have to turn in glass containers equivalent to the full containers the food comes in. If they were short, they would be required to buy new containers. Breaking a container would be a catastrophe because there is a built-in fine included in the "deposit" price. Pay once, and it's part of setting up house; pay over and over and it is a tax on wastefulness and carelessness. There would be permanent, re-usable home carriers and shipping containers for each size of glass.

This would take a lot of paper, plastic, steel and glass from the waste-stream. In our house, a lot of the trash and recycling comes from the kitchen (including wine bottles), with shipping materials a close second. We generate 2 or 3 times as much recycling as we do trash, and that's without my "dream" of deposit-glass-for-everything. Re-use, recycle, or do without.

[Glenn E.]

Iron and steel: some scrap steel is needed to make new steel but there must be some economic value to recycling or why would China be buying up so much of our recycled steel?

In many ways, China is only now going through our equivalent of the industrial revolution. They're desperate for steel because they need it to build out their industry and infrastructure. I don't know all that much about the quality of recycled steel, but at the very minimum recycled steel is better than no steel at all.

[Moses Botbol]

Historically, there has been a rush to build strategic mineral reserves before going to war so perhaps China wants to just increase their overall reserves should something happen with North Korea, Taiwan, internal opponents, or whomever. Obviously, they also need steel to manufacture everything as well as building factories.

[Eric Menchen]

I bet it is also cheaper to recycle steel in India (also a big buyer of scrap steel) and China than in other countries due to lower regulatory and environmental costs. But I'm just speculating.

I was surprised by Glenn's comments about other metals not being that viable for recycling. So I checked what a local scrapyard is paying, and my findings were more in line with Peter's statements. They'll pay for aluminum, more for some forms than others; and they'll pay for copper, again at different rates depending on how easy it is to get at the copper and how pure it likely is to be. In fact, for good forms the price is more than $1/lb. I was real surprised, however, to see that they weren't buying mild steel. I'd been saving scraps from a metal project, but I guess they'll just go into the recycling bin. They would pay for stainless steel, which I expected. For this the price has come down in the last year (a defective beer keg is now worth $20 or so, previously $30-35), but it still is worth recycling.

[Peter W. Meek]

I don't know all that much about the quality of recycled steel, but at the very minimum recycled steel is better than no steel at all.

Quality is iffy. You see a lot of it in SE Asian goods coming back as imports. Most American re-rod (concrete reinforcing rod) is made from recycled steel. One piece will be soft as butter; the next will be brittle enough to form stress cracks when you bend it. (I watched a lot of re-rod being bent; there are about 80 tons in the new house! Approximately one ton is visible in the photo.)

re-bar - west foundation wall

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