How to Recycle Wine Bottles and Cases

Recycling glass bottles

Glass is one of the most sustainable materials out there. It’s a very easy material to melt down to make into something else and can be recycled indefinitely. Even better, it doesn’t lose any of its quality when recycled.

If your empty wine bottle is heading for a recycle bin it just needs to be emptied and rinsed first. Most wine bottles can simply be recycled in your home recycling bin. If not, bottle banks and other glass recycling bins will be available at your local centre and often in big supermarket car parks too.

Check your local council for which recycling bin you should use and if coloured glass makes a difference as some coloured glass can’t go into the normal recycle bin.

Any damaged glass bottles should still ok to put in your normal recycling bin. Most councils in the UK accept broken glass but do double check this first.

Recycling wine bottle tops

Any screw tops or synthetic corks can be recycled together with the wine bottle, so you can leave them attached. Any foil from sparkling bottles can go into the foil recycling separately. 

Corks can’t be recycled in normal recycling bins. Natural cork is compostable so if you have a compost bin, you just need to chop it up into small bits and chuck it in there to mulch.  

Alternatively, there are dedicated companies for dealing with corks, for example the charity Recorked, who either re-sell the corks or donate them to artists and schools for crafting. If you’re feeling creative you could of course collect corks and make something out of them yourself!

Upcycling wine bottles

There are loads of cool things you can do with empty wine bottles if you fancy doing a bit of upcycling instead of recycling. If you’re doing this for any reason you need to give the bottles a really good wash with hot soapy water. We have some great label designs on our bottles which you may want to keep on, but if not then you can soak with baking powder to get rid of any sticky residue.

The most obvious way to reuse your bottles is for serving other drinks out of. They look especially nice on the table as water bottles if you have people round. 

There are lots of ways that empty wine bottles to be repurposed in a decorative way. This can include vases for flowers, making a lamp by putting LED fairy lights inside a bottle or the old classic of popping a candle in the top!

How to recycle your wine case

Our wine boxes are made from 100% recyclable cardboard which can go in your normal recycling bin. Alternatively you can keep them for storage or give it to a child or pet who may find something fun to do with it!

Sustainability at Virgin Wines

We’ve taken many steps over the years to continually improve our sustainability as a company, it’s something that we take very seriously. For example, you may have noticed that our bright red wine boxes are now plain brown cardboard with a small amount of red writing in order to reduce the amount of dye we need to use.

Hit the link below to read more juicy details about our sustainability journey so far and our ambitious plans for the future.