# Turning Winery Waste into Climate Action with Megan Hernandez

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Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-green-building-matters-podcast-with-charlie-cichetti-559336/turning-winery-waste-into-climate-action-with-megan-hernandez.md
Podcast: [The Green Building Matters Podcast with Charlie Cichetti](https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-green-building-matters-podcast-with-charlie-cichetti-559336)
Published: 2026-04-15T04:00:00+00:00
Episode link: https://gbespodcast.libsyn.com/turning-winery-waste-into-climate-action-with-megan-hernandez
Audio file: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/gbespodcast/GBES_Wirh_Megan_HernandezSponsor.mp3?dest-id=583595
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Duration seconds: 1895

## Resource

🎯 The Green Impact Report Quick take: The wine industry produces mountains of packaging waste most people never see. Megan Hernandez is proving that when vineyards collaborate, that "trash" can become a powerful lever for sustainability — and even revenue. 🎓 Meet Your Fellow Sustainability Champion Megan Hernandez is a wine industry professional based in Sonoma County, California. With a background in viticulture and enology from UC Davis, Megan has spent her career deeply connected to agriculture and winemaking. Today she works with wineries supplying organic yeast and cooperage while leading sustainability initiatives across the region. Megan is also a driving force behind the North Bay Zero Waste Collective, a collaborative effort helping wineries transform waste streams — like plastic film, cardboard, and packaging — into recoverable commodities rather than landfill. Her work demonstrates how industry collaboration can unlock scalable environmental solutions. 🌱 Breaking Ground on Better Building 🧠 Key Insight #1: Waste isn't garbage — it's an untapped commodity stream. The Challenge: Many wineries — and businesses in general — assume their waste belongs in recycling or landfills. But large portions of materials like plastics and packaging never actually get recycled. The Solution: The North Bay Zero Waste Collective aggregates waste materials from multiple wineries to meet volume thresholds required by recycling and reuse markets. ROI: Wineries reduce landfill costs, create potential revenue streams from recovered materials, and dramatically reduce environmental impact. 🧠 Key Insight #2: Sustainability becomes scalable when competitors collaborate. The Challenge: Individual wineries rarely generate enough recyclable material to meet the large volume requirements ne…

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