We are very excited to announce our new natural cork recycling partnership with CorkIt of Vancouver BC. They are recycling the corks collected at our global partner, Whole Foods Market stores in the greater Vancouver area. We want to thank our partner Whole Foods Market, for all the effort provided to put this partnership together and help remove millions of natural corks from our landfills.
CorkIt is an environmental social enterprise that collects natural cork wine bottle stoppers via bicycle in Metro Vancouver. Working with the local community CorkIt creates innovative, ecological applications for natural cork and engages the public in environmental stewardship and awareness. CorkIt advocates for the ecological, agricultural and cultural capital that the cork forests of Europe, and Africa produce.
CorkIt also builds a market to use recycled cork as a medium to produce with. By reaching an audience that is diverse and able to use the medium in a variety of ways, CorkIt is achieving this mandate by carrying out three objectives.
Fine Arts Objective: Stimulating this industry with cork can create cottage level production, along with promising private ventures. CorkIt builds a base of established artists and designers to start conceptualizing projects with commercial outcomes.
Stewardship Objective: Working with Gordon Neighborhood House, the Cork Forest Conservation Alliance, Whole Foods Market and local schools in awareness campaign for natural cork, and the need to preserve and protect the cork forests of the Mediterranean basin that produce it. Advocating for the ecological, agricultural and cultural capital that these regions produce. CorkIt focuses on local efforts that can create global change.
Environmental Objective: By maintaining an environmental operative to reduce local waste in order to relieve local landfill operations and the total carbon footprint. CorkIt has developed a recycling model that reduces the transfer of trash and operating carbon emissions. CorkIt ships and receives local cork with carbon neutral vehicles (bicycle/trailer combination, etc.). CorkIt is also able to reduce atmospheric carbon through the production of its products. Essentially, our products are made to recycle and to be recycled.
Ian Simpson
Project Coordinator
