How Do Small Businesses Affect the Global Environment?

Environmental regulations usually focus on large businesses and whole industries, yet small businesses actually generate 60 percent of all commercial waste and cause half of all environmental damage worldwide, according to the European Environment Agency.

A team of researchers from the University of Palermo in Italy, led by Maurizio Cellura, studied the amount of commercial waste and environmental damage related to producing a single bottle of red wine at Sicily’s award-winning Milazzo winery. Saverio Lo Leggio, the owner of Milazzo, volunteered his winery for the two-year study, and he was surprised by the results.
_{Photo courtesy of Karpati Gabor}

The Global Environmental Cost of Wine
Producing one bottle of Terre della Baronia created more than a pound of waste and released 16 grams of sulfur dioxide into the air. Producing the 2004 vintage of 100,000 bottles created 22,000 pounds of plastic waste, 11,000 pounds of paper waste. and more wastewater than anyone had predicted.

“Our focus was making wine,” Lo Leggio told The New York Times, “so for us, there were many surprises. We had no idea how much water we used for irrigation, about how much paper was thrown away during labeling.”

Findings of Study Lead to Changes in Business
The European Union is adapting the techniques used by Cellura and his team to study the global environmental cost of doing business and producing a wide range of products at many other small companies in Europe. The goal is to help small companies determine how their operations are affecting the environment and identify ways they can lessen their environmental impact.

At Milazzo winery, Lo Leggio and his colleagues already have changed the way they print labels, started recycling plastics, and installed a system that allows them to reuse irrigation water. Lo Leggio even decided to stop using chemical pesticides to protect his grapes.

“Producing the wine is more delicate — you have to be very careful with storage — but I think it’s worth it,” he said in an interview with The New York Times.

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