Plastic Buckfast bottles petition

Angela Graham, and dog Brin, next to broken glass

A woman has launched an online petition to urge the monks of Buckfast Abbey to put tonic wine into plastic bottles.

Angela Graham, 29, from Cumbernauld, wants Buckfast to make the switch because of the amount of broken glass littering Lanarkshire.

She urged Buckfast to show "social responsibility".

A spokesman for distributor J Chandler and Co said he had visited Ms Graham and seen far more broken white glass from other drinks bottles.

Broken glass

Miss Graham said: "We should be able to enjoy the outdoors without the hazard of broken glass."

"The vast majority of broken glass I see is from Buckfast bottles.

"Many other producers of alcoholic beverages popular with under-age drinkers have already made the switch to plastic.

"It is my sincere hope that Buckfast Abbey will do the same.

"People and animals will not encounter such severe physical harm from a dropped plastic bottle as they would from smashed glass.

"Bottling Buckfast in plastic bottles will remove some of the danger."

Burning plastic

J Chandler spokesman Jim Wilson, who has visited Ms Graham, told BBC Scotland's news website that Buckfast's distinctive green bottles accounted for very little of the litter.

He said: "Why is Ms Graham singling out Buckfast when there was much more glass from Smirnoff Ice and Barr's Irn Bru? I have taken photographic evidence to prove this."

Mr Wilson said that sales of Buckfast were minuscule compared to those of other alcopops.

He said the distributors had refused to put the tonic wine in plastic bottles on environmental grounds.

Neither landfill nor burning plastic was considered suitable by the company, he said.

The tonic wine is made by Benedictine monks who settled in Devon from France.

Sales of the wine worldwide are thought to be worth about £28m.