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The Waste & Resources Action Progamme (Wrap) has found that lightweighting of bottles, irrespective of whether they are glass or PET, will lead to a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

In addition, the more recycled content used in the bottle, the greater the reduction of carbon dioxide emissions, and therefore the greater benefit to the environment.

These are the main results of the first study, published by Wrap today (13 March), into the carbon impact of bottling wine in the UK in glass and PET bottles.

The study, carried out for Wrap by sustainability consultancy Best Foot Forward, looked at the carbon impact of 75cl glass and PET wine bottles in wine bulk imported from Australia, since this is one of the main producing countries from which wine is bulk imported.

Wrap compared a 54g PET bottle with no recycled content with a typical 496g glass bottle with 81% recycled content and a lightweight 365g bottle with 81% recycled content.

The 496g glass bottle with 81% recycled content had the highest carbon dioxide emissions (523g), followed by the 365g glass bottle with 81% recycled content (453g).

The PET bottle came out marginally lower than the 365g glass bottle (446g), although the higher carbon dioxide emissions arising for PET from manufacture offset much of the savings obtained from its low weight.

The report also compared a 365g glass bottle with 92% recycled content and PET bottles with different recycled content and found that emissions reduced as the amount of recycled content increased.

The "greenest" bottle, giving 356g of emissions, was the 365g glass bottle with 92% recycled content.

Wrap also found that it is more efficient in terms of energy and resources to incorporate recycled PET (rPET) into bottle manufacture than to produce the bottles using only virgin material.

Ribena and Innocent Drinks are currently trialling 100% rPET bottles in soft drinks and Smoothies in the UK.

Wrap's category manager for beverages, Nicola Jenkins, said the next step would be to look at increasing the recycled content of PET for wine bottles, which has made slow progress so far because of concerns about oxygen degradation affecting the quality of the wine.