Organic wine is twice as good for the planet

The London News.Net
Tuesday 2nd September, 2008 (ANI)

London, September 2 : A new research has indicated that organic wine is twice as good as the non-organic variant for the planet, as the former is more eco-friendly.

According to a report in New Scientist, for the research, Valentina Niccolucci and colleagues from the University of Siena, Italy, measured the resources used to grow, package and distribute wine made from Sangiovese grapes at two farms in Tuscany 30 kilometers apart.

The organic farm used only natural fertilizers and pesticides, and most operations were done by hand, while the other used conventional methods of production.

The team worked out the resources needed to support the making of each wine - its "eco-footprint".

A bottle from the organic farm had an eco-footprint of 7.17 square meters, half that of the non-organic wine with a footprint of 13.98 square meters.

This is because the mechanized production used more land and non-recycled glass.

Though it's not clear that organic food is always eco-friendly, the team said that wine producers could shift to organic systems to reduce their overall ecological impact.

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