This morning The Wall Street Journal featured a company that would appear to be Napa Valley’s version of YouRenew, with one critical difference – they work with used wine bottles.

In addition to sharing our suffix, Wine Bottle Renew has developed a process that addresses a very similar problem with a very similar solution: reuse wine bottles that would otherwise be thrown away or recycled. According to the article, most of the carbon emissions that result from wine production come from the manufacturing and transportation of empty bottles; and reusing these bottles instead of melting and reforming them will reduce emissions in this segment by close to 95%.

This isn’t a new concept for glass bottle manufacturers. In fact, this process has been widespread for years with Coke, milk and beer bottles. But this has not taken hold in the wine world because vineyards require a far more comprehensive sterilization process and will often make hard to remove labels designed to survive in ice-water. Wine Bottle Renew claims it has developed improved technology that will sufficiently overcome these hurdles, and could possibly even improve the sterilization process.

But despite the challenges it sounds like they have a great idea and could really be on to something great!

If you have been watching the stock market there has been a lot of news to follow over the past two weeks (Congress raising the debt ceiling, dramatic dips in equity markets, the rise in the price of gold, Ben Bernanke’s commitment to hold down interest rates over the next two years) which is why you may have missed landmark news in the technology sector: briefly yesterday, Apple became the largest publicly traded company in the world by market capitalization.

Although Exxon surged ahead at the end of trading to maintain its status as Heavyweight Champion of the S&P 500, Apple has achieved an enormous feat that many analysts thought wouldn’t happen for several months. It is particularly impressive given that Apple is operating in an industry that is highly competitive and dynamic. It has been an exceptionally innovative company that has been able to diversify its products without losing quality or focus.

It is great to hear that the technology industry is having such great growth, but with increasing dissemination of devices there is an increasing need for proper disposal solutions, so we will keep working to make sure that there is an easy and efficient way to handle the old devices.

How well the company either holds its value or grows is yet to be seen, but I know that I still loving using my Apple products: after I write this post on my Macbook, I’m going to download a few new songs off of iTunes and go for a run with my iPod.