Planetsave

The next time you pop into the store for a bottle of vino, think of the poor cork tree. Every plastic cork that’s pulled drives a nail into the heart of the traditional cork tree industry.

Cork is harvested in a sustainable way- the tree is shaved like a sheep so the tree keeps growing as it’s farmed. They become homes for birds, boars, deer, and lynx and the best way to keep them around is to support the people who own them by buying natural cork wine.

Here’s a quick bit of a post Green Options just did on cork…

Ever since the French monk Dom Perignon searched for the perfect closure for his new sparking wine in the early 16oos, the cork stopper has been a cultural staple that is synonymous with the celebration of opening a new bottle of wine. Since the new millennium, worldwide wine production has become a larger and more popular industry. New wine producing regions are moving towards alternative wine closures, therefore putting the entire cork industry at great risk. Can anyone remember why we started putting plastic, rubber, and foam “corks” into our wine bottles? I was always told one of two things: a more controlled (more synthetic) material allows for more stringent product, and that cork was scarce so we don’t want to destroy the cork forests. The former is a problem that has since been solved, and the later is hardly the case. Cork is a naturally sustainable material and therefore commercialization of it is easy on nature- not a single tree has to be cut down.

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