Abstract
The Italian wine industry is strongly committed to sustainability: the stakeholders’ interest for the topic is constantly growing and a wide number of sustainability programs have been launched in recent years, by both private businesses and consortiums. The launch of these initiatives has signaled the commitment of farmers and wine producers to the implementation of sustainability principles in viticulture and wine production, which is a positive signal. Unfortunately, however, the varied design of the sustainability initiatives and the differences in the objectives, methodologies, and proposed tools risks to create confusion, and undermine the positive aspects of these initiatives. In order to bring some clarity to this topic, we herein present a comparison of the most important sustainability programs in the Italian wine sector, with the overall objective of highlighting the opportunity to create synergies between the initiatives and define a common sustainability strategy for the Italian wine sector.
Highlights
The wine industry can be seen as less “dirty” than other sectors, as for example the chemical one [1,2], wine producers and vine growers have been increasingly engaged in sustainability driven by different forces, first of all the environmental concerns
Not all the projects are in the same phase of implementation and for some elements—for example, the presence of a label to certify the adhesion of a winery to the program or the requirement for a sustainability report—we received answers during the interviews such as “this element is not present at the moment, but it is expected to be inserted later in the program”
The results of this study indicate that, in general, no one sustainability program is “better” than the other, because any comparison always has to take into account the specific objective that each program aims to gain and the peculiarities of the companies they address
Summary
The wine industry can be seen as less “dirty” than other sectors, as for example the chemical one [1,2], wine producers and vine growers have been increasingly engaged in sustainability driven by different forces, first of all the environmental concerns. The wine industry, has to face a number of environmental issues and challenges. Sustainability 2014, 6 sustainable practices and these aspects are often mentioned as relevant: soil management, water management, wastewater, biodiversity, solid waste energy use, air quality, and agrochemical use [3]. Producers have to limit the use of chemicals, promoting their sustainable use in order to preserve and enhance the level of biodiversity and soil fertility. Water must be managed responsibly by minimising consumption and reducing run-off of contaminated wastewater. Wineries must manage the landscape, to protect the health and safety of workers, as well as minimize its impact on the community (from chemical spray drifts, odor, and noises) [1,2]
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