It's the lightweight at the end of the waste tunnel

Overcoming the drinks industry's resistance to eco-friendly initiatives remained a core challenge, said the Waste & Resources Action Programme (WRAP), as it unveiled the sector's progress on adopting lightweight bottles.

Announcing the results of phase one of the UK GlassRite Wine project, launched in summer 2006, at the London International Wine Fair, Nicola Jenkin, WRAP beverages category manager, said: "Of the signatories to the industry's Courtauld Commitment [to cut food and packaging waste], there are few alcoholic drinks brands. We are aiming to continue conversations on this."

Phase two of the GlassRite Wine programme will take it to major New World wine countries and Continental Europe and investigate lightweight bottles for champagne and sparkling wine. However, WRAP said it had met resistance from some wine producers and retailers.

"We will look at trialling sub-300g wine bottles, which technically can be designed," said Jenkin. "The problem is it's not always what the wine industry wants. Some think that people will feel a lightweight wine bottle is of less quality. Others assume it will be easier to break, whereas lighter bottles can often be stronger."

By contrast, the beer sector had already been won over and WRAP was now looking at reducing multipacks' packaging.

Jenkin denied that switching to lightweight bottles would make major changes to filling lines necessary. Reducing the diameter of bottles could affect filling, she said, but could also reduce trunk loads, cutting road miles during distribution.

More than 350 different wine labels have been lightweighted so far and glass packaging has been cut by 11,400t per year through the WRAP initiative.