Spain has one million hectares of vineyards, 13% of the world’s vineyard area, making it the third-largest wine producer globally and the largest exporter. It generates 2.2% of the country’s Gross Value Added (GVA), according to 2021 data from the Spanish Wine Federation. In Catalonia, vineyards cover 56,000 hectares, generating a turnover close to 1.2 billion euros, ranking it fourth in the agri-food sector. Aware of the impacts of climate change on both vineyards and wine quality, the wine sector has been investing significant efforts for years to adapt to climate change —such as cultivating at higher latitudes, seeking grape varieties more adapted to drought, or applying agronomic techniques designed to maintain soil moisture. But that’s not all. Responding to the demands of environmentally conscious consumers, the wine industry has also made strong commitments to reduce its carbon footprint and implement eco-design and circular economy principles in its production processes.

In this regard, if there is a pioneering winery in quantifying its carbon footprint and decarbonising, it is Família Torres, with whom inedit has collaborated. Under the premise “The more we care for the land, the better our wines,” the winery intensified its environmental commitment in 2008 by creating a program to reduce its carbon footprint (GEH), adapt to the new climate scenario, and raise awareness in both the sector and society. One of the outcomes of this commitment is the alliance formed in 2019 with the Californian winery Jackson Family Wines to establish the International Wineries for Climate Action (IWCA), a collaborative working group that currently brings together 45 wineries from around the world committed to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. IWCA’s goal is to work together to decarbonise the wine sector by applying direct solutions that avoid purchasing carbon offset credits and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 —meaning strategies to reduce GHG emissions and capture them from the atmosphere, resulting in a net zero balance.

Sustainability, «a competitive advantage»

One of these wineries is Herència Altés, a family winery in Terra Alta dedicated to the production of organic wines, which has always made sustainability one of its pillars. Herència Altés decided to join IWCA to position itself as a reference in the path toward sector sustainability, convinced that it would provide them with “a competitive advantage” because “increasingly, the market will seek products and producers with a strict decarbonisation trajectory,” in the words of the winery’s co-owner, Rafael De Haan. In 2023, the winery became a member of IWCA, committing to comply with the United Nations’ “Race to Zero” initiative, which aims to reduce its emissions by 50% by 2030 and achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

On this journey, with the support of proACCIÓ Green vouchers, inèdit assisted Herència Altés by calculating their carbon footprint, identifying the main sources of emissions, establishing measures to reduce them, and helping them calculate the reduction potential of the defined measures. Among the actions included in the decarbonisation plan are expanding the surface area of solar panels, installing new lithium batteries to store solar energy and avoid diesel consumption, or reducing the weight of bottles by 30%, which reduces the impact of raw material acquisition, manufacturing, transportation, and waste management. The carbon footprint calculation revealed that nearly 92% of the winery’s emissions came from indirect activities, such as the acquisition and use of third-party products and services or transportation emissions. Therefore, one of the fundamental actions is selecting suppliers aligned with the United Nations’ “Race to Zero” initiative.

Suppliers, the engine of change

It is common for indirect emissions to account for the majority of emissions in any organization’s carbon footprint calculation. Therefore, influencing suppliers is not only necessary to achieve decarbonization goals but also serves as a traction function, motivating potential suppliers to embark on the same path if they want to remain competitive. “When 60%, 70%, or 80% of the carbon footprint comes from suppliers, managing the relationship with suppliers is necessary,” explains Jordi Oliver, CEO of inèdit. In supplier relationship decision-making, “in addition to incorporating aspects like price or quality, the carbon footprint factor will be included,” he adds, making the path towards decarbonization “more shared.”

In this regard, once again, Familia Torres has been a pioneer in our country. In 2015, the company’s president asked the main suppliers of glass, cardboard, paper, cork, aluminum, and distilled products to calculate their carbon footprint and establish a plan to make processes more efficient and incorporate eco-design into packaging.

Packaging: ecodesign and reuse

Regarding packaging, one measure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to reduce the weight of glass bottles, as previously mentioned. However, it can go much further and incorporate eco-design criteria into all parts of the primary packaging, beyond just the bottle: in the label, the cork, the capsule, or the packaging. A good example of what can be done is the project inèdit carried out for the La Vinyeta winery, where the following actions were proposed for two of their wines: regarding the label, reducing its size, using FSC-certified paper, printing in few colors or even monochromatically using biodegradable or water-based inks, and using a water-soluble adhesive. In the case of the capsule, making it smaller and of a single material was proposed to facilitate recyclability, and for the cork, prioritizing cork as the material. As a conclusion of the project, it was found that eco-design allows for an improvement in the environmental impact of packaging in all stages of the life cycle, ranging from 5% (reducing the weight of the bottle) to 92% (label with FSC certification).

Whether or not eco-design criteria have been applied to glass bottles, the best environmental option will always be reuse. In the case of wine and sparkling wine bottles, having a bottle collection and washing system shows that reuse results in savings of between 0.56 and 2.6 kg of CO2 equivalents per bottle, accumulated after 8 reuses. This is one of the results of the reWINE project, which concluded in 2020 and included a twenty-month pilot test involving seven Catalan wineries, over thirty stores, more than fifty restaurants, two logistics companies, and three collection points, in addition to two washing plants. The project concluded that bottle reuse in the Catalan wine sector could lead to savings of over 100 million kg of CO2 equivalents annually and 21,756 tons of waste, reducing the carbon footprint of the wine sector by 28%.