Environmental impacts of consumption of Australian red wine in the UK

The UK consumes almost 5% of world's wine production, drinking 12.9 million hectolitres annually or 21 l per capita per year. Australian wines are most popular with the UK consumer, accounting for around 17% of total take-home purchases. This paper focuses on Australian red wine and presents the life cycle environmental impacts of its consumption in the UK. The results indicate that a 0.75 l bottle of wine requires, for example, 21 MJ of primary energy, 363 l of water and generates 1.25 kg of CO 2 eq. For the annual consumption of Australian red wine, this translates to around 3.5 PJ of energy, 600 million hectolitres of water and 210,000 t CO 2 eq. Viticulture and wine distribution are the main hot spots contributing over 70% to the environmental impacts considered. Shipping in bulk rather than bottled wine would reduce the global warming potential (GWP) by 13%, equivalent to 27,000 t CO 2 eq. annually. For every 10% increase in recycled glass content in bottles, the GWP would be reduced by 2% or 3600 t CO 2 eq./yr; the savings in other environmental impacts are smaller (0.7–1.5%). A 10% decrease in bottle weight would reduce the impacts by 3–7%; for the GWP, the saving would be 4% or 7000 t CO 2 eq./yr. If only 10% of the wine was packaged in cartons instead of glass bottles, the GWP savings would be 5% or 10,600 t CO 2 eq./yr; the other impacts would also be reduced by 2–7%. These measures could together save at least 48,000 t CO 2 eq./yr, almost a quarter of the current emissions from the UK consumption of Australian red wine.