Life cycle environmental impacts of viticulture and wine industry

Every agricultural activity has its particular impact on the environment, contributing to climate change and global warming. The use of fertilizers, pesticides, soil, land, water, and energy in various agriculture sectors is responsible for approximately 20% of all greenhouse gas emissions. The process of growing grapes and transforming it into wine, contributes to environment issues as well. In general, viticulture and wine industry have a mix of positive and negative impacts in the world, such as the social, health and economic impacts of winemaking industry are recognizable and debatable. The global wine industry use large amounts of chemical fertilizers and organic substances, use pesticides to prevent the vineyard of possible crop diseases and to improve grape quality and yield, generates a large quantities of cane pruning waste each year. Pesticide application in the vineyard contribute the majority of toxicity-related emissions, while the use of nitrogen and phosphorous fertilizers contribute to eutrophication and acidification impact categories. Viticulture, winemaking, manufacturing glass bottles, various transportation links, refrigeration and recycling of glass bottles are processes that influence the wine’s life cycle and all of them necessitate the transformation of materials and energy, resulting in emissions which contribute to various environmental impacts. Therefore, in order to improve the wine’s life cycle impact and to achieve a sustainable development of the viticulture and wine sector, from one side, as well as to avoid unnecessary environmental emissions which may contribute to irreparable ecological damage, from other side, the materials and energy resources for wine production and consumption must be used efficiently