The Institut Català del Suro Foundation has collected 4,000 corks to recycle at the Barcelona Wine Week. The president of the BWW, Javier Pagès, and the president of the ICSuro Foundation, Joan J. Puig, closed this alliance for sustainability at the Fira de Barcelona with the transfer of 50 urns and 6 cork collection boxes, which will be allocated to projects ofcircular economy.

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 common goal of improving the competitiveness of the wine sector, which historically already operates in the cork sector with support to wineries from an oenological perspective with constant improvements in the performance of the cork stopper to favor an optimal evolution of the wine.

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 And given its characteristics, cork retains many of the properties that make it a unique material, such as thermal and acoustic insulation or resistance to the passage of time.

The Alcorke project

The corks collected by the Institut Català del Suro Foundation at Barcelona Wine Week will be used for the project Alcorque, a circular economy project with the collaboration of the Agència Catalana de Residus that seeks to give a second life to used corks by means of their collection, crushing and mixing with adhesives to use them on tree stumps and pavements of the children's parks.

It is a project in which the ICSuro Foundation has poured many expectations, as it would allow absorbing a large amount of caps that are currently destined for composting and give them a new function in municipal urban planning. In addition, it has great potential in terms of environmental education and the promotion of recycling.