ALex
09-04-2008, 11:55 AM
I wanted to share this article from the Press Democrat, a newspaper in Northern California. My cousin sent it to me and it got my idea gears turning and maybe it will turn yours. - ALex
Popping corks out of landfills
ReCork America in Napa amassing wine stoppers for recycling
Story by KEVIN McCALLUM
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Published: Sunday, August 31, 2008 at 4:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, August 31, 2008 at 9:50 a.m.
A fledgling cork recycling program that aims to divert millions of used wine corks from landfills is gathering such momentum that its organizers aren't sure they can keep up with what has become a flood of the buoyant little bungs.
http://srimg.ny.publicus.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=SR&Date=20080831&Category=BUSINESS&ArtNo=808310355&Ref=AR&Profile=1036&MaxW=250&border=0 (http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/article/20080831/BUSINESS/808310355#)
Related Links:
Toss them in the green bin (http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/article/20080831/WIRE/808310358/1036)
ReCork America, a campaign sponsored by the massive Portuguese cork manufacturer Amorim, has amassed more than 1 million used corks at a warehouse in Napa -- so many that it's not sure what to do with them all.
"My sense is we're going to have a tidal wave of corks coming in here in the next six months," said Roger Archey, ReCork America's project manager.
That's because some of the largest players in the California wine industry now support the project, hoping to be good corporate citizens while burnishing their credentials as "green" businesses.
The 18-month-old program has signed up more than 40 wineries in California and Oregon, and about 100 restaurants, wine retailers and other groups, mostly in Napa, where Amorim is based, Marin and San Francisco.
"There's a really great secondary market for used corks, but it just took someone with a bigger vision to pull it all together," said George Rose, spokesman for Santa Rosa's Kendall-Jackson winery.
At least seven of the wineries with tasting rooms owned by Kendall-Jackson founder Jess Jackson are participating in the program, including the La Crema tasting room in downtown Healdsburg.
Visitors to La Crema's tasting room who might wonder why staff members go to the effort of recycling all those corks don't have to look very far -- the tasting room floor is made of cork, just one of the innumerable uses for recycled wine corks.
Cork manufacturers produce about 13 billion stoppers each year, but to date there has been no coordinated effort in the United States to keep the corks out of landfills.
Without a recycling network, most people and businesses just throw them in the garbage. That's a shame, because as a natural material, corks have no business in a landfill, Archey said.
The vast majority of the world's wine corks are made from the bark of the cork oak tree in Portugal. The bark is "peeled off like a banana" every few years and turned into a range of products beyond wine corks, from shoes to pingpong paddles, Archey explained.
Despite being a natural material, cork takes years to break down in a typical landfill because it is durable and water resistant, he said.
So the goal of ReCork America is to build a nationwide grass-roots coalition of wineries, restaurants, individuals and others who will work together to efficiently recycle wine corks.
It's a huge logistics challenge that Archey admits he is far from having completely worked out. He's told many of the tasting rooms and restaurants that have recently signed up to put the corks aside and when they start getting in the way, he'll figure out how to come get them.
"We're still kind of in the beta stage of the whole program," he said.
The largest challenge is an economic one -- old wine corks simply aren't valuable enough to make recycling them worth it, financially speaking.
Justin Vineyards, a medium-size winery in Paso Robles, for example, wanted to participate, but its distance from Napa is a problem. The cost -- in terms of money and environmental impacts -- of transporting the corks 250 miles to Napa far outweighs any benefits, Archey said.
"It's ludicrous for me to send someone down there to pick up 500 corks," he said.
But it might work if all the wineries on the Central Coast got together and gathered their used corks into one massive pile. That load might then be able to hitch a ride on a delivery truck already heading north, reducing the impact, Archey said.
While it doesn't make economic sense to have employees all over the country gathering corks, a network of "small groups of passionate volunteers" might just get the job done, Archey said.
He's already seen it work in his home in Marin, where "eco moms" and schoolteachers have enlisted their favorite restaurants to participate in organized cork recycling drives.
Beyond logistics, another major challenge is quality control.
While cork is recyclable, other types of "alternative closures" such as plastic corks and screw caps are not. For the program to be effective, people will need to diligently separate out the natural corks from the man-made ones, Archey said.
That could prove tricky, as last weekend's Family Winemakers of America wine tasting event in San Francisco proved. Hundreds of small wineries were asked to recycle their natural corks, but Archey had the unenviable task of collecting the results.
"I had everything from rodents to banana peels to half-eaten hamburgers mixed in the corks," he said. "It was disgusting."
Another challenge is finding a cost-effective way to reuse the corks. Archey said he's talking to one company that's experimenting with turning them into packing material, and another that may make them into flooring.
"We're looking for some creative ideas," he said.
Whatever outlet they find for the corks, Amorim is unlikely to profit from the venture.
But there are other benefits. The main one is marketing and education. Every time someone thinks about cork as a sustainable natural material, Archey knows they might think twice about reaching for an unrecyclable screw-cap or plastic cork, which he enjoys referring to as a "hunk of petroleum in your wine bottle."
"Doing the right thing will return profits and business in ways that you don't even think about," he said.
You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@
pressdemocrat.com.
Popping corks out of landfills
ReCork America in Napa amassing wine stoppers for recycling
Story by KEVIN McCALLUM
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Published: Sunday, August 31, 2008 at 4:30 a.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, August 31, 2008 at 9:50 a.m.
A fledgling cork recycling program that aims to divert millions of used wine corks from landfills is gathering such momentum that its organizers aren't sure they can keep up with what has become a flood of the buoyant little bungs.
http://srimg.ny.publicus.com/apps/pbcsi.dll/bilde?Site=SR&Date=20080831&Category=BUSINESS&ArtNo=808310355&Ref=AR&Profile=1036&MaxW=250&border=0 (http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/article/20080831/BUSINESS/808310355#)
Related Links:
Toss them in the green bin (http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/article/20080831/WIRE/808310358/1036)
ReCork America, a campaign sponsored by the massive Portuguese cork manufacturer Amorim, has amassed more than 1 million used corks at a warehouse in Napa -- so many that it's not sure what to do with them all.
"My sense is we're going to have a tidal wave of corks coming in here in the next six months," said Roger Archey, ReCork America's project manager.
That's because some of the largest players in the California wine industry now support the project, hoping to be good corporate citizens while burnishing their credentials as "green" businesses.
The 18-month-old program has signed up more than 40 wineries in California and Oregon, and about 100 restaurants, wine retailers and other groups, mostly in Napa, where Amorim is based, Marin and San Francisco.
"There's a really great secondary market for used corks, but it just took someone with a bigger vision to pull it all together," said George Rose, spokesman for Santa Rosa's Kendall-Jackson winery.
At least seven of the wineries with tasting rooms owned by Kendall-Jackson founder Jess Jackson are participating in the program, including the La Crema tasting room in downtown Healdsburg.
Visitors to La Crema's tasting room who might wonder why staff members go to the effort of recycling all those corks don't have to look very far -- the tasting room floor is made of cork, just one of the innumerable uses for recycled wine corks.
Cork manufacturers produce about 13 billion stoppers each year, but to date there has been no coordinated effort in the United States to keep the corks out of landfills.
Without a recycling network, most people and businesses just throw them in the garbage. That's a shame, because as a natural material, corks have no business in a landfill, Archey said.
The vast majority of the world's wine corks are made from the bark of the cork oak tree in Portugal. The bark is "peeled off like a banana" every few years and turned into a range of products beyond wine corks, from shoes to pingpong paddles, Archey explained.
Despite being a natural material, cork takes years to break down in a typical landfill because it is durable and water resistant, he said.
So the goal of ReCork America is to build a nationwide grass-roots coalition of wineries, restaurants, individuals and others who will work together to efficiently recycle wine corks.
It's a huge logistics challenge that Archey admits he is far from having completely worked out. He's told many of the tasting rooms and restaurants that have recently signed up to put the corks aside and when they start getting in the way, he'll figure out how to come get them.
"We're still kind of in the beta stage of the whole program," he said.
The largest challenge is an economic one -- old wine corks simply aren't valuable enough to make recycling them worth it, financially speaking.
Justin Vineyards, a medium-size winery in Paso Robles, for example, wanted to participate, but its distance from Napa is a problem. The cost -- in terms of money and environmental impacts -- of transporting the corks 250 miles to Napa far outweighs any benefits, Archey said.
"It's ludicrous for me to send someone down there to pick up 500 corks," he said.
But it might work if all the wineries on the Central Coast got together and gathered their used corks into one massive pile. That load might then be able to hitch a ride on a delivery truck already heading north, reducing the impact, Archey said.
While it doesn't make economic sense to have employees all over the country gathering corks, a network of "small groups of passionate volunteers" might just get the job done, Archey said.
He's already seen it work in his home in Marin, where "eco moms" and schoolteachers have enlisted their favorite restaurants to participate in organized cork recycling drives.
Beyond logistics, another major challenge is quality control.
While cork is recyclable, other types of "alternative closures" such as plastic corks and screw caps are not. For the program to be effective, people will need to diligently separate out the natural corks from the man-made ones, Archey said.
That could prove tricky, as last weekend's Family Winemakers of America wine tasting event in San Francisco proved. Hundreds of small wineries were asked to recycle their natural corks, but Archey had the unenviable task of collecting the results.
"I had everything from rodents to banana peels to half-eaten hamburgers mixed in the corks," he said. "It was disgusting."
Another challenge is finding a cost-effective way to reuse the corks. Archey said he's talking to one company that's experimenting with turning them into packing material, and another that may make them into flooring.
"We're looking for some creative ideas," he said.
Whatever outlet they find for the corks, Amorim is unlikely to profit from the venture.
But there are other benefits. The main one is marketing and education. Every time someone thinks about cork as a sustainable natural material, Archey knows they might think twice about reaching for an unrecyclable screw-cap or plastic cork, which he enjoys referring to as a "hunk of petroleum in your wine bottle."
"Doing the right thing will return profits and business in ways that you don't even think about," he said.
You can reach Staff Writer Kevin McCallum at 521-5207 or kevin.mccallum@
pressdemocrat.com.