Now there is another recycle bin that you can add to your plastic, glass and paper bins – a wine cork bin.  Yes, wine corks made from natural cork are recyclable and several programs are willing to accept your used corks.

ReCork America was started by Amorim & Irmãos of Portugal – the world’s largest producer of natural cork wine closures (over 3 billion annually) – and their U.S. sales offices, Amorim Cork America and Portocork America to recycle used and excess corks.  Most of its corks come from winery tasting rooms and bottling processes.  The organization has also provided drop off sites at various retail outlets on the West Coast.

After collecting the corks in its California warehouse, ReCork America has three options for dealing with the corks:

Some of the cork will return to Portugal for remanufacturing into shoe soles, flooring, insulation, bulletin boards and a wide variety of other cork products. While long distance transportation is an issue, the fact that there is a manufacturing facility and ready workforce waiting to process our corks is a plus.

We are also looking for applications closer to home. These include using the corks for soil amendment in compost, to replace wood chips and sand under playground equipment, as packaging material and landscaping topping.

Bottom line: we have room to store millions of corks in our Napa warehouses while we look for reuse partners and creative applications. Keeping corks out of landfill continues to be our goal.

Another recycling option is to send your corks to Yemm & Hart who will turn them into cork tiles.  Again, the only corks that are being recycled at Yemm & Hart are made from natural cork.  The company decided to focus on using the corks to produce tiles that could be used for flooring, wall tiles or any other use that people can think up for cork tiles.

The Korks 4 Kids program will collect natural cork wine stoppers and supply them to various companies who will use the old corks for new products.  The money that the program gets from providing the corks for recycling will be donated to the Autism Foundation.

With each of these programs, you send your corks to the company of your choice and provide the postage.  The twist with Korks 4 Kids is that your mailing costs are tax deductible.

The next time you pop that cork on a bottle of champagne, chardonnay, or shiraz, remember to set it aside for recycling.

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Entry was posted on Friday, January 9th, 2009 at 7:40 pm under Green Technology.

Read more entries by Susan Wilson.
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