Recycling Guide - Cork

Cork is a purely natural product and therefore a valuable raw material. Cork is made from the peeled and cooked bark of the cork oak tree. Around 400,000 kilos are consumed in Switzerland every year, but only four percent are recycled. Almost all consumption in Switzerland comes from cork cones. Around 150,000,000 pieces are used annually. If strung together, this would be the equivalent of a cork snake from Moscow to New York.

Traditional cork extraction is very gentle. Peeling does not damage the tree and the bark even grows back in better quality. As a completely natural, renewable and completely biodegradable material, cork is far too good to be used once as a bottle stopper.

The collected cork cones are ground into different grain sizes and used as soil loosener, covering material or filling and insulating material.

You can find further information about cork as a raw material at korken.ch