Winery Sustainability Grant Part 2

Winery Sustainability Grant Part 2. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. Winery Wise is an offshoot of the successful Vinewise program and it recently received a Specialty Crop Block Grant to build a Guide to Sustainable Winery Practices. Joy Andersen, Snoqualmie winemaker and Chair of the Winery Wise Steering Committee says they spent a lot of time working towards this point. ANDERSEN: So we've been again over the past few years trying to do this on a grass roots effort and are real pleased now that we can have some grant monies to go forward and do this right and finish it off. The Washington Wine Industry Foundation was awarded $128,250 to complete the Winery Wise program. ANDERSEN: Currently it's nine chapters if you will and it can expand. It's a dynamic kind of process so if we find we need to address other issues we will as we go forward. But it will address things such as energy and water and education and outreach, waste management, site development, purchasing and so forth. Anderson says they hope to also move into some other areas. ANDERSEN: There's a need – a real need for glass recycling in the state. We want to be able to make some impact on glass recycling. We'd also like to improve composting options for wineries so there's a few other things we'd like to do as an industry, pooling our resources and seeing what we can come up with. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.