Verallia, the new brand for all the glass packaging businesses of Saint-Gobain, has sold more than 200 million wine and beer ECO Series™ bottles to a number of environmentally conscious wine and beer glass customers since it introduced the containers 18 months ago. Verallia says that this outstanding response has exceeded all expectations.

Verallia’s ECO Series lines were the first glass containers manufactured in North America focusing on “eco-conception,” which the company says is a process to maintain high quality and enhance customer appeal while lessening the overall impact on the environment (energy demand, transportation impact, and CO2 emissions). Each ECO Series bottle is part of a company-wide sustainable development initiative that has gained a national presence with Verallia being the first (and, to date, only) glass container manufacturer to earn the EPA’s ENERGY STAR® Partner of the Year Award (2009 and 2010) for its energy conservation efforts. In addition, Verallia has also been named an EPA Climate Leader partnering with that federal agency to achieve a 16% greenhouse gas reduction by 2012.

“Verallia is proud of our ECO Series lines and how these containers are helping the environment and our customers,” says Joseph Grewe, president and CEO for Verallia North America. “For each ECO Series container that is manufactured and filled, our customers have the satisfaction of knowing they are reducing the impact their package has on the environmen.”

For example, Verallia’s ECO Series Inspiration wine bottle reduces consumption of energy for manufacturing and CO2 emissions by 21% when compared to a “classic” wine bottle. The Evolution wine bottle is said to increase the reduction to 33% when compared to a classic wine bottle. The same results for the Beer ECO Series™ range show that a Verallia ECO Series Heritage beer bottle generates 15% less GHGs than a classic Heritage bottle when manufactured.