One of 3CM's many bad habits is the occasional bit of hoarding, for no particular reason at all that makes any sense. One such example has been a result inheriting several mostly poured bottles of wine after a wine tasting. It's not hoarding the wine, of course, since wine is meant to be consumed, particularly once the bottle has been opened and the clock is ticking once you've broken the seal on it. Nor is it the bottles, since those go to recycling. But one element remains: the corks. I mean actual naturally derived corks, from cork trees, of course, rather than the synthetic corks that have become much more prevalent. Part of me was hoping that there was some sort of way to reuse or recycle cork, but I didn't know of any such means until fairly recently.
That is, until I finally did what most normal folks do and refer to today's standard of finding knowledge (some of it true), namely teh Google. What it revealed, among other things, was....
.......the ReCORK site. There was even one site to recycle that was kind of along the way to doing something else that day, so it wasn't a drive there simply to leave the cork and go home, which would have been a ridiculous carbon footprint that would pretty much have defeated the purpose of recycling. It was mildly droll to get to the restaurant, and see the tall cardboard box at the entrance for leaving the corks. For the record, the box was something like 4.5' x 2.5' x 2.5', and the corks were maybe something like a foot thick. So not that tall in terms of the total box volume, but not bad.
The issue of corks and recycling cork relates obviously to environmental sustainability and the human race's seemingly inexorable trashing of the planet, fitting with Earth Day approaching (but then every day is Earth Day, of course). In a more wine-centric sense, the issue of newer wine bottles with screwcap tops and synthetic corks vs. traditional "old school" wine bottles with natural corks also arises. At her blog "Wine Folly", Madeline Puckette had this blog post from this past February that looks at the corks vs. screwcaps issue. She notes pros and cons of both:
"Cork: Pros
* A Natural Renewable Resource
* Historically Preferred
* Longterm Aging Proven
Cork: Cons
* Expensive (2-3x)
* 1-3% Affected by TCA 'Cork' Taint [Chemistry geek note: TCA = trichloroanisole]
* Limited Natural Resource
* Variable Quality
* Natural Corks Breathe at Variable Rates
Cork Alternatives: Pros
* More Affordable Option
* No TCA ‘Cork’ Taint
* Longterm aging studies have shown positive results
* Screwcaps are easy to open
Cork Alternatives: Cons
* Some cork alternatives don’t breathe
* Mostly Made From Non-Renewable Resources
* Recyclable but Not Biodegradable
* Variable Manufacturing Quality
* Associated with ‘Cheap’ Wine"
Probably the biggest bugbear in terms of carbon footprint is the "mostly made from non-renewable resources" part, since screwcaps are metal-based. When one recycles wine bottles with the screwcap metal flange, obviulsyt the whole bottle goes to the single-stream container, and presumably the metal part gets sorted out downstream.
I don't have any sort of easy answer to this kind of situation (what, you think that 3CM offers constructive solutions to problems?), plus there's also the whole question of the ethics of drinking wine in the first place, if you want to read this piece by Leo Hickman for The Guardian back in 2006. Hickman notes, speaking of recycling:
"Our taste for New World wine also raises the issue of just how sustainable it is to ship a heavy liquid contained in glass half way round the world. We import twice as much green glass as we manufacture, mainly in the form of wine bottles. Despite our best efforts to recycle more, we still send 1,400,000 tonnes of glass a year to landfill: glass now accounting for 7% of household waste."
BTW, Hickman puts himself firmly in the natural cork camp:
"And, yes, cork is better than screw-tops or plastic 'corks' because the cork farms of the Mediterranean are sustainably managed and important for the region's biodiversity."
If we truly recycled everything, of course, but that's a rant for another day. With that, whether you're in need of a glass of wine or not, 'tis time for the standard SNLC protocol now, namely your loser stories of the week.....