Wine Lovers & World Enviroment Day

Posted on June 5, 2008
Filed Under Environment

In case you didn’t know, June 5th, is World Environment Day, and I just came across something interesting for those who love wine and the great earth it comes from.

Green Cork

As of today, a new wine cork program - Green Cork- is launching in Portugal, and currently in talks to go global. The program focuses on recycling wine bottle corks at central locations such as grocery stores, to facilitate collection. Here in the Algarve, Continente supermarkets are the first to support the program, so you can look to them for their Cork recycling containers, believe the first location will be in Portimao. Then hopefully, we’ll see others such as Modelo, Pingo Doce, Jumbo, etc. following suit.

Although I try to be green, I hadn’t given much thought to those lovely cork stoppers that separate me from a great meal accompaniment. But after getting up to speed, it makes a lot of sense, here’s what I learnt:

Cork trees need to grow for 25 years before their first cork harvest, the second - only after another 10-12 years…wow!
The lifetime of a cork tree is about 125 years, totaling around 25 harvests
Since cork is bark, it naturally absorbs CO2s
If cork is incinerated it contributes the additional CO2s
When used for bottling it stays in a natural unprocessed form, making it ideal for recycling
It’s one of earths most natural products like wool and cotton
It has a large variety of uses when recycled
footwear, tiling, flooring, boards, coasters, etc.

Don’t know about you, but I’ve been keeping a jar of wine corks for a while…more for memory than recycling purposes, for now they’re great decoration in my kitchen, but when it comes time, I’ll know where to take them.

Cork recycling has already started in a number of countries, so check locally, you might just have a drop box or mail address close by. Since these corks have lived a long time before getting to you, maybe think about turning them into art, or recycling; just don’t throw them in the bin! It’s a perfect day to start cork recycling, so go out and get yourself a great bottle of Portuguese wine, and save the cork! Saude.