A number of people around the world enjoy drinking wine. Each time a bottle of wine is opened, a cork is added to the pile of waste collected in the house. The amount of cork waste generated in houses is lesser when compared to the number of corks from hotels, restaurants, and wine tasting rooms finding their way to the garbage bin. Fortunately, corks are eco-friendly products that can be easily recycled and reused. They are hundred percent biodegradable and are derived from the bark of cork oak trees. The trees are not cut down but the bark is harvested by hand, making them completely environment friendly.
Nevertheless, most of the time people end up disposing off corks in the trash cans, as they do not know how it can be recycled. Recycling reduces the strain on landfills and even on cork plantations to increase the production and supply of corks. It also reduces the carbon footprint generated during transportation of corks to different places. Setting up cork collection boxes in restaurants encourages people to drop off their collections of corks for recycling. Given below are a few ways on how cork can be recycled and reused.
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Small amounts of cork collected from household waste can be creatively used to make household articles like wall art, coasters, bulletin boards, pincushions, and a lot of other such articles. There are various sites, which talk about the different craft and artwork that can be made with corks.
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There is an attempt by green products manufacturers to develop methods by which corks can be processed and reused to create tiles, floorings, and other such products, thereby increasing the life of this natural material.
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Cork can be disposed in compost pits where it is converted into biomass and clean fuels that can be used as sources of energy.
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Cork can be recycled to make products like boat decking, as fillers in cricket balls and to make insulation – it acts as a good noise and heat insulator.
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