DID YOU KNOW
Following a carbon audit carried out in 2003, the champagne industry has been engaged in a study about how to reduce the weight of the bottles.
The standard weight of a champagne bottle is 900 g (versus 450-500 g for other wine bottles). The extra weight is needed because of the pressure inside a bottle of champagne. Working with a number of French glass manufacturers a huge number of experiments has been carried out involving a wide cross-section of businesses to test an 835 g bottle. For the champagne industry the introduction of these lighter bottles is yet another step towards its goal of reducing its carbon footprint by 25% by 2020.The use of these new bottles will save 8,000 tonnes of carbon per year, the equivalent of the emissions from 4,000 cars.For the consumer the differences are almost imperceptible to the eye or to the touch.
The bottles we use are made in Reims. The glass factory uses 80% recycled and re-heated glass to make champagne bottles and I urge everyone to be even more attentive to what you recycle because anything other than glass (porcelain for example) that gets mixed in with the glass reduces the strength of the new bottles.
Clear bottles which are very fashionable for rosé champagne, don’t contain any recycled glass and what’s more, producing clear bottles requires the furnace to be heated to higher temperatures than for green glass.
Clear bottles are not therefore very environmentally-friendly.