As an agricultural product, the cultivation of grapes requires natural, manufactured, and energetic resources, resulting in both proximate and macro-scale environmental emissions. Along the rest of the product chain, wine making, packaging, transport, refrigeration and disposal can further add to the material and energy requirements, and subsequent environmental implications of wine.
As an agricultural product, the cultivation of grapes requires natural, manufactured, and energetic resources, resulting in both proximate and macro-scale environmental emissions. Along the rest of the product chain, wine making, packaging, transport, refrigeration and disposal can further add to the material and energy requirements, and subsequent environmental implications of wine.
Here, life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology was employed to quantify the material and energy inputs, and associated environmental emissions of one bottle of wine produced and consumed in Nova Scotia, Canada. Results indicate that viticulture, bottle provision, and consumer transport contribute the greatest portion of wine's total impacts. Nutrient management offers the greatest potential source of improvement in the vineyard, and consumer transport distance should be minimized.
Modeled scenarios indicate that provision of lighter bottles could result in non-trivial reductions to nearly all impact categories, whereas organic viticulture offers potential improvements to only certain impacts. A scenario modeling increased transport distance from winery to market provided strong evidence that purchasing wine from a local source may indeed offer environmental advantages over imported wine. However the mode by which wine is transported was shown to be equally important to the distance that it travels.
Post a new comment »