Wine Tasting and Environmentalism

Here’s a pic of my financial adviser, Glenn Koach, along with his wife Yuko and my wife Becky (right).  We enjoy a variety of activities together, though they normally include tasting wine somewhere.  Which brings me to the point of this post, which is expressed in the title; I tend to notice aspects of these experiences that are related to environmental sensitivity.

Note the item pictured on the right, the “Wineskin,” a bottle-shaped piece of bubble-wrap, used for minimizing the risk of breakage while under transport.  A question, though: who needs this?  What’s the matter with wrapping the bottle in a towel and reducing the use of plastic?

Not to trip out on something so apparently trivial, but the viability of this product depends on Americans’ continuing belief that they have no responsibility to reduce their consumption of resources.  I predict this will soon give way to people’s asking themselves: Do I really need this? And the answer, at least in this case, is no.