When the founders of Revino were looking to partner with a manufacturer to create returnable glass wine bottles for their new business winery partners, they found shared sustainability values with local access in O-I Glass.
More than three dozen small wineries in Oregon plan to use Revino’s closed loop system for wine bottles. Through O-I Packaging Solutions, a specialty team within O-I who excels at turnkey solutions for smaller companies, O-I will provide returnable refillable glass wine bottles for Revino. Revino will distribute, collect, wash, and inspect the bottles to go back into circulation.
“What stood out to me in early conversations was the voice of entrepreneurship within O-IPS to create something new, to provide new solutions to a marketplace that O-I had been in for decades,” Revino co-founder Keenan O’Hern said. “To see that same kind of perspective – the desire to create something that was really good for the marketplace – it just really felt like a natural fit.”
A Shared Commitment to Sustainable Glass Packaging
For more than a century, O-I has transformed how the world stores beverages, working to make glass more accessible to everyone. Revino’s founders say they recognize O-I’s commitment to sustainability, a shared value.
“[There was] a lot of synergy and ethos around our shared beliefs around really trying to come up with not only a sustainable solution, but a solution that really made sense, and had an infrastructure around it, and could really last,” O’Hern said. He said O-I’s willingness to collaborate and talk through issues has pleasantly surprised their partner producers.
“The fact that O-I has increased their focus on sustainability, their Glass to Glass [program], really trying to ensure that they’re promoting the most recycled glass into overall production – those are the things that stood out to us,” O’Hern said.
Keeping production of the refillable glass wine bottles regional was also important to Revino. O-I has several plants that serve winemaking regions in Northern California and the Pacific Northwest.
“We have the opportunity to support factories that hire folks from our local areas,” said co-founder Adam Rack. “We can continue to build a more sustainable economy with what’s in our backyard while supporting the people that already work there.”
Setting up the Infrastructure for Returnable Glass Wine Bottles
O-I Glass will locally produce more than 2.4 million returnable, reusable glass wine bottles as part of this end-to-end refillable glass bottle reuse system. Each of these bottles can be reused at least 25 times on average before being retired and recycled into new glass packaging.
Customers can return bottles to the winery, or at any partner locations – including existing refillable beer bottle collection infrastructure that has been in place since 2018. O-I was among the first partners behind those returnable, refillable beer bottles for the Oregon Beverage Recycling Cooperative.
The O-I-produced BottleDrop Refillable Bottle was used by breweries – and even a few wineries. In fact, Revino co-founder Adam Rack used the BottleDrop refillable beer bottle at Cooper’s Hall winery in Portland, OR, which started as a keg-only winery that was dedicated to using zero single-use packaging. However, Rack explained, the beer bottle was not the ideal solution for wineries that still have a strong commitment to the traditional wine bottle shape.
Glass Wine Bottles: The Best Option for Taste, Sustainability
Revino’s reusable glass packaging solution appeals to the heart of this tradition as well as the commitment to sustainability that these wineries have. Reusable glass bottles have the least environmental impact, the lowest carbon footprint, and virtually no end-of-life waste as they’re recycled.
“Glass is the only packaging option that provides a long lasting product that doesn’t interact with the wine inside, it has to be glass,” Rack said. “This is a huge opportunity for [wineries], a huge step forward … and reusables provide all these other benefits. You have a package that displays that it’s reusable, marketing what you do as a winery and your decision making around thinking about the planet and your impact.”
Consumers who visit select Oregon retailers and the tasting rooms or online stores of these Oregon wineries will begin to see the Revino returnable glass wine bottles in the first half of 2024.
