Pink PET: Garçon Wines to launch 100 percent recycled and recyclable wine bottle

30 Aug 2018 --- Garçon Wines is set to launch a 100 percent recycled and recyclable PET bottle which is pink in color to package a new rosé wine. Significantly, the pink bottle color allows the product to avoid issues of discoloration and maintain consumer appeal. The bottles come with a plastic screwcap to ensure they’re truly 100 percent recyclable. Santiago Navarro, CEO and Co-Founder of Garçon Wines, speaks to PackagingInsights about combining super-sustainability with aesthetics.

“As the inventors of flat wine bottles with a long-term goal to make flat more commonplace than round, we choose to do the right thing first and foremost by the environment, not the cheap or easy thing, as we believe this will create the most solid foundation to our success,” explains Navarro.

Pink PET wine bottle
Consumers have recently been faced with an ethical dilemma as a response to brands testing PET bottles made from recycled plastic. Highland Spring recently launched its first 100 percent recycled PET water bottle, the Eco Bottle, to the UK market and earlier this year the Co-op pledged to switch its water bottles to 50 percent recycled plastic but there has been a consumer perception issue around the cloudier, greyer appearance of the bottles.

“We massively applaud the recent work by Highland Spring and the Co-op earlier this year in releasing bottles made from post-consumer recycled PET. In both cases, comments have been made with regards to the 'grey tinge', 'greyish color', 'cloudier and greyer appearance' and more,” says Navarro.

“We believe that the risk consumers won’t understand and accept this is an easy one to mitigate against by coloring the bottles. Which is why our new 100 percent recycled PET bottle for our first rosé wine has been colored a light pink, concealing the slightly off-putting grey color and achieving the same aim to offer the eco-friendliest bottles on the market.”

“With the benefit of hindsight, this may seem simple and obvious, but in fact, it's not. I believe many would have tried to change the material, possibly reducing to 50 percent recycled content, when in fact that's not proper problem-solving in a commercial setting. And getting back to the light pink bottles, from user research, this appears to work well. So, we've got all the benefits of the most eco-friendly wine bottles on the market, made from 100 percent recycled PET, whilst removing the negative of the discoloration from post-consumer recycled plastic. If this wasn't good enough, they also come filled with delicious wine...”

Garçon recycling system
Future plans include a way for Garçon Wines to have their own collection of used bottles which would be recycled into the production of new bottles without having to rely on the government recycling system.

“We're working on this and we've got a smart way to potentially collect our bottles from right across the UK. How we do that, is a trade secret for now,” Navarro tells PackagingInsights. “In terms of turning our used bottles back into new ones; well the great people at RPC M&H Pla

stics are working with us on this and we'll let you know the details when the time is right. We do, however, know that it's possible.”

“As with the bottles themselves, our collect and recycle system is a collaborative effort between the blue-sky, out-of-the-box thinking of, us, a start-up backed by the expertise and resources of a giant in packaging, RPC M&H Plastics. This is a perfect combination for innovation,” he adds.

Letterbox wine bottles
Garçon Wines is famous for its invention of the eco-friendly, innovative 750ml slimline wine bottle that is revolutionizing wine delivery into UK homes through the letterbox.

“There is a sense they are designed to be posted through the letterbox, but letterbox delivery is just the tip of the iceberg for flat drinks bottles. We've got lots of interesting projects in the pipeline to maximize the opportunity from single bottle delivery, via the post and through consumers' letterboxes,” says Navarro.

“However, we've also got as many interesting opportunities in sales channels and countries where there are no letterboxes. There's no good reason for wine bottles to be round. We've bridged the divide between the emotional benefits of round, glass bottles and the functional benefits of bag-in-box, and in the process we plan to disrupt wine and spirits bottles way beyond letterbox delivery into the home in the UK.”

“Rome wasn't built in a day, so we take each step carefully, but our ambitions match the size of the opportunity for the disruptive innovation presented by the novel flat shapes produced in a sustainable material like 100 percent recycled PET,” Navarro concludes.

The Rosé Wine Letterbox gift (containing flowers and rosé wine) will be available from Next Flowers from 23 August for £35 (US$46).

By Joshua Poole