The Catalan Institute of Cork Foundation (ICSuro) has repeated as a sustainability partner of Barcelona Wine Week (BWW) by means of the recycling of corks of the bottles that are uncorked at the fair. 4,500 corks have been recovered, which will be used for circular economy projects in order to give a new use to this cork which, despite fulfilling its function as a cover, retains most of its properties, such as resistance to the passage of time or thermal and acoustic insulation.

The alliance between ICSuro and the BWW, which consisted of the placement and management of 50 cork collection urns, was formalized by the general director of Alimentaria Exhibitions and head of the BWW, Tony Valls, and the president of the Institut Català del Suro Foundation, Joan J. Puig.

By Joan J. Puig, "the binomial cork-wine is indissoluble because we are talking about two products of a natural 100% origin and which have been historically linked. Therefore, it is essential that the cork sector stands by the wineries, supporting them in terms of sustainability in a reference event such as Barcelona Wine Week".

With strategic actions such as the recycling of corks, but also the calculation of the carbon footprint or the bet on marketing through the design of corks, the cork sector works to strengthen the culture of cork within the wine sector and that the wineries see the cork as an ally not only to achieve the optimal evolution of their wines, but to increase the sustainability of their products. Along these lines, the ICSuro has participated in a conference on ecodesign and sustainability of the wine sector in this BWW together with the Spanish Wine Federation, ecovidrio and the Freixenet Group.

The recycling of caps

With the commitment to the recycling of corks, the Fundació Institut Català del Suro works in contact with other recycling and waste management entities such as Ecoembes, Ecovidrio or the Catalan Waste Agency to find ways to reuse these corks in a viable way environmentally, socially and economically.

The main objective of this line of work is to extend the life of the cork in the caps so that it continues its function as a reservoir of carbon dioxide and to give greater value to the final product beyond its composting through its recycling in the container organic

The Alcorke project

The corks collected by the Institut Català del Suro at Barcelona Wine Week will be used for the project Alcorque, a circular economy project with the collaboration of theCatalan Waste Agency to give a second life to the corks used by means of their collection, crushing and mixing with adhesives to use them in the tree trunks and pavements of the children's parks.

This is a project that is in the pilot phase and would allow absorbing a large amount of caps that are currently destined for composting and giving them a new function in municipal urban planning. In addition, it has great potential in terms of environmental education and the promotion of recycling.