Wine expert: boxed wine better for the environment From an op-ed
piece by Tyler Cowen in The New York Times. More than 90 percent
of American wine production occurs on the West Coast, but
because the majority of consumers live east of the Mississippi,
a large part of carbon-dioxide emissions associated with wine
comes from simply trucking it from the vineyard to tables on the
East Coast. A standard wine bottle holds 750 milliliters of wine
and generates about 5.2 pounds of carbon-dioxide emissions when
it travels from a vineyard in California to a store in New York.
A 3-liter box generates about half the emissions per 750
milliliters. Switching to wine in a box for the 97 percent of
wines that are made to be consumed within a year would reduce
greenhouse gas emissions by about two million tons, or the
equivalent of retiring 400,000 cars. (via Daring Fireball).