Whether you're drinking red or white wine, time to make your wine consumption a bit greener!
Did you know that you can recycle wine and champagne corks through a company we have discussed on Earthascope before, TerraCycle? You might also try to sell them on Ebay or make them into something useful! Check out the step-by-step process for collecting and recycling (along with photos) below!
How do you recycle wine corks? Wine cork recycling can be easy!
I used TerraCycle for sending off my wine corks. You can check out handmade sites like Etsy to see if there are any projects you might want to take on yourself to use, give as a gift, or sell. Or make it up yourself! I’ve seen trivets, wreaths, baskets, and bulletin boards made from spent wine corks. What ideas do you have for reusing wine corks? Comment below!
You have to register with TerraCycle in order to send them corks. So, if you are an avid wine lover or work in the industry and come across a lot of corks, this might be the type of fun reuse efforts to join!
As wine consumption in the U.S. increases, there are a lot more corks to be reycled. Now, you can too!
TerraCycle will occasionally send me an email with a free shipping label offer, which means it cost me only a small amount of time to mail them. Another great thing about Terracycle — they accepted my rubber and plastic corks along with the natural cork product!
Where else can you recycle wine corks?
Yemm and Hart is another recycler that will accept your wine corks. They specifically want natural cork tree bark corks for making into cork floor tiles. From their website, it says that you can send them to: Wine Cork Recycling, Yemm and Hart Ltd., 425 North Chamber Drive, Fredericktown, MO 63645. You’ll pay the shipping, but cork is very lightweight!
You may be becoming a bit of a wine aficionado, but did you know that wine corks come from the bark of the Cork Oak and is a renewable resource? It’s also very recyclable! Do you know of other places where wine corks are accepted? Be sure to share them in the comments section below!
Check out the simple wine cork send-off to TerraCycle!
Step 1:
These corks were collected from a food service vendor as well as a few from personal wine consumption!
Feel free to ask wine shops and restaurants if they would be willing to set corks aside. Just be sure to check in every so often to see if they’re ready for a pick-up.
Step 2:
Chose a box from your recyling that will be sturdy and big enough for the job.
Pack up your corks — and feel free to count ‘em up to see just how many you are keeping out of the landfill! Mine totaled 322!
Step 3:
Pack the box up with tape, adding the prepaid shipping label. Then walk it over to your local UPS!
It’s pretty much that simple! I collected these corks over the course of about a year, but depending upon your source, you may collect more of them a lot more quickly!
Other resources:
The Earth Is Not a Trash Can (article)
Tiny Choices (article)
Nomacorc (partner with TerraCycle in wine cork recycling project)
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March 24th, 2009 at 8:12 pm
As a preschool teacher, I welcome donations of wine bottle corks to my classroom. They are a great addition to a water table.
March 24th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
Thanks, Becky! Another way to reuse corks! It looks like Yemm and Hart have gotten the message, too. They don’t use the plastic and rubber corks that make their way to them in their finished products. But as they sort them out, they do donate them to schools for craft projects!