FLAT-PACK ‘GREEN’ WINE BOTTLES

BACK in 2016, when wine wholesaler Santiago Navarro decided to start a wine club, he was confounded by the fact that glass bottles, though environmentally friendly, were heavy and cumbersome to deliver.

he began to investigate the possibility of a plastic wine bottle flat enough to fit through a letter box and attractive enough to be brought to the table.

The flat bottles are made in Suffolk from pellets produced by the household recycling system, then dyed green.

‘I absolutely insisted my bottle be made from 100 per cent recycled plastic. I was determined to do this the right way, not the easy way,’ says Navarro.

Now Garcon Wines sells wine by post in an impeccably ‘green’ plastic bottle made entirely from household plastic waste, and which itself is recyclable.

The bottle has environmental benefits both in terms of production (you can recycle one plastic bottle 20 times before you match the carbon emissions generated by the production of one bottle made from glass) and transport (for delivery, there’s an 87 per cent weight saving and a 40 per cent space saving). A bottle sent to Sir David Attenborough prompted a hand-written reply saying: ‘Thank you so much for sending me a generously filled wine bottle.

‘I can see its advantage if it is manufactured from pre-existing plastic, with the additional saving of energy from weight reduction, and I wish you every success with it.’