ReCork Australia

In partnership with Australia’s major liquor retailers and several Australia-based manufacturers, Amorim Cork is pleased to bring our cork recycling program, ReCork, to Australia.

ReCork provides a life beyond the bottle for used wine corks, extending their incredible CO2 retention values in to exciting new products for consumers.

The cork industry has long been regarded as the world’s most sustainable form of agriculture due to the minimal intervention required to harvest the cork from this native (to the Iberian Peninsula) tree species. Only every 9 years will the tree be harvested for its bark, enabling the tree to live a full life of 150+ years, sustained within an unhindered ecosystem. The cork forest (or Montado as it is known in Portugal) is home to hundreds of species of fauna and flora, making it one of Earth’s most important biospheres.

Cork’s unique properties, coupled with its sustainability credentials make it a diversely used material. Today we see cork in fashion, architecture, aerospace, motor vehicles, public spaces and construction, but its best known use is in the wine industry to which Amorim Cork supplies almost 6 billion cork closures each year.

Cork’s relationship with wine dates back centuries, however with modern practices, corks today provide the reliability and performance certainty required by a contemporary wine industry, all while maintaining a high carbon sequestration value, substantially offsetting the carbon footprint of the other packaging elements.

ReCork allows consumers to return their used wine corks to stores.  All corks collected in store will be sent to a granulating plant where the corks will be ground into small particles.  Thanks to cork’s range of useful properties, such as lightness, compressibility, insulation and buoyancy, these cork particles can then be applied to a diverse range of industries.  Our recycling program partner, Save our Soles, will be launching a range of new recycled cork products to the market over coming months as the the supply of used corks ramps up.

Don’t forget, ReCork is for cork closures made from natural cork only.  Screw caps, plastic stoppers and other packaging elements will contaminate the recycling process.   Refer to the cork recycling box for more information.