Thursday, July 3, 2008

Another Way to Recycle Wine Bottle Corks: Terracycle


A while back I did a post on recycling wine corks. It's ended up being one of my most searched for pages. Apparently, a lot of people are interested in recycling them. Including me. 

Today, I came across Terracycle's Cork Brigade. You can send them your used wine corks (they accept as few as 5) and they will be recycled into useful objects. There are very few places in the U.S. that recycle wine corks, so this is a welcome addition to the ones that do.

Something I found interesting on their website is that they suggest you send them the corks in upcycled packages. They suggest things such as a potato chip bag that has been washed and turned inside out. I suppose you tape it up, slap a label on it, and use it as your packaging material. HMMM.. I'll have to try this!

Terracycle also has programs to recycle juice pouches, yogurt cups and other materials that usually end up in the trash. Some of the items they will even pay for. I'm going to be contacting the superintendent of my school system about the juice pouch program. I'll report more on that in a later post.

You'll probably be opening a few bottles of wine this holiday weekend. Save the corks. Ask your friends and neighbors to save theirs, too. Save a potato chip bag from one of your BBQ's. Then do some good and send it all to Terracycle next week.

Image from Terracycle's website

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5 comments:

Corky said...

Check out www.recorkamerica.com for information on a new natural cork recycling program on the West Coast. They have collected over 4 tons to date.

Melissa said...

I like the idea of using "trash" to mail them in. I do a lot of book mailing on paperbackswap, and I always try to dig something out of the trash to wrap the book in rather than a new sheet of paper. It's a fun challenge for myself!

Robin Shreeves said...

Corky - checked out the site and sent an e-mail with some questions.

Melissa - Ya, using trash to send things through the mail sounds like a good idea to me, too. I save all of my packing materials (and if I get a ton like after the holidays, I freecycle them) so I never have to buy any. But an empty chip bag could do in a pinch.

Unknown said...
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Anonymous said...

Its really nice. save our forest by recycling wine corks. Instead of throwing ship them to CORKCLUB.