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Initially, Sainsbury's will offer two own label wines in the new PET bottle: A New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and an Australian Ros?. If successful, they will be rolled out to other wines.

The new wine bottle looks exactly the same as a glass bottle, holds the same amount of liquid and doesn't compromise the quality of the wine in any way. PET bottles have many benefits, and are recyclable.

A regular glass wine bottle weighs approximately 400 grams compared to a PET bottle at 54 grams. This means the PET bottle is an eighth of the weight.

The UK consumes around one billion bottles of wine every year, using around ? million tonnes of glass for the packaging. Reducing the weight of all glass wine bottles to the lightest available could reduce carbon emissions by around 90,000 tonnes.

Sainsbury's PET wine is also bottled in the UK rather than at source, this means nearly twice the amount of wine can be transported per container. Bulk shipping also reduces the environmental impact of transportation, which again will reduce the impact of carbon emissions.

Moving wine bottles from glass to PET could significantly contribute to Sainsbury's new target of reducing CO2 emissions by 25% by 2012.

The PET wine bottles are one of many projects Sainsbury's is exploring to be more energy efficient, particularly in the area of transport and operations, where it aims to reduce the distance its fleet and suppliers travel by 5 million kilometres by 2010.