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Quick Cork Fact
Cork is a 100% natural, renewable, recyclable and biodegradable material that is obtained through an environmentally friendly harvesting process.
Trees are not cut down to harvest cork, rather, the bark is stripped by hand every 9-12 years. Cork oak trees can live up to 300 years!
Approximately 6.6 million acres of Mediterranean cork forest extend across Portugal, Spain, Algeria, Morocco, Italy, Tunisia and France. These oak forests support one of the world's highest levels of forest biodiversity, second only to the Amazonian Rainforest.
Opting for screw caps and plastic stoppers directly causes the loss of sustainable livelihoods as the cork forests are a vital source of income for thousands of families.
There is enough cork in the cork forests of Portugal and Spain to last more than 100 years. The introduction of new products, such as composite corks, allows even better utilization of existing cork resources, using granulated cork that can be obtained from smaller pieces of raw cork otherwise unusable in the production of conventional punched cork.
Leading the Cork Recycling Movement
Since starting in 2008, Cork ReHarvest has led the cork recycling movement in the US and Canada, helping to collect and recycle some of the 13 billion natural corks that are produced each year. Equally important is our work to educate the public about the Mediterranean cork forests. These forests contain one of the world's highest levels of forest biodiversity including endemic plants and endangered species such as the Iberian Lynx, the Iberian Imperial Eagle, and the Barbary Deer. It is also vital source of income for thousands of family farmers, who for generations have worked these forests. It is our calling and our passion to protect the Mediterranean cork forests, not as a relic of the past, but as an integral part of our planet's biosphere.
To meet our goals, we work with businesses, communities, colleges, and government agencies to help support our efforts to save this remarkable natural resource.
Mission StatementOur organization is dedicated to the protection and sustainability of the Mediterranean cork forests and the families, who for generations have farmed these forests.
Cork ReHarvest is the leading national recycling organization focused on recycling natural cork and educating the public about the vital importance that the Mediterranean cork forests have to the world's ecological balance.
Cork ReHarvest partners with businesses, communities and governments to accelerate the adoption of sustainable practices.
We believe that teaching and promoting sustainability is the best way to systematically approach and solve the many complex environmental challenges facing society today.
Committed to Collaboration and Stewardship
Our goal is to work with all facets of the Food and Beverage industry and the general public to develop ways to collect and recycle the billions of wine corks ending up in landfills across North America. We are also committed to the educational process of dispelling the mis-information about the cork forests and cork closures.
What We Do
- We speak for the cork forests, and for the people, communities, wild animals and plants that depend on those forests for their survival.
- We offer educational presentations that focus on the ecological importance of the Mediterranean cork forests and the negative environmental impact of screwcaps and synthetic closures.
- In creating a viable collection and recycling program, we work with our corporate partners to collect the corks before they reach the landfills. However, collecting the cork is not enough, doing so without increasing its carbon footprint is our major goal.
- We work with new businesses that recycle cork, to develop carbon neutral processes for manufacturing and shipping of the up-cycled cork.
Our issues:
- Education
- Recycling
- Environmental Business Development
- Stewardship
