Rockwell Group is proud to announce our latest pro bono initiative, Cork Collective, along with partners across the hospitality industry, packaging and wine sectors, and the design community. Fueled by the expertise and passion of its founding partners—Rockwell Group, Amorim, BlueWell, & Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits—we are dedicated to transforming used natural cork stoppers into valuable resources, showcasing its versatility and sustainability.
Through the collection, recycling, and repurposing of natural cork stoppers, the Cork Collective’s mission is to galvanize the hospitality industry and the public to envision new possibilities for cork, one of the most sustainable and remarkable natural resources in the world. The Cork Collective creates a ‘closed-loop’ system where resources are reused, upcycled, and regenerated to minimize waste and promote sustainability.
Beginning in Summer 2024, the Cork Collective collaborated with pilot participants from diverse hospitality businesses in New York to collect and recycle used wine corks for repurposing into eco-friendly post-consumer cork resources. Learn more about the initiative and our upcoming events at corkcollective.org.
Why Cork?
The Cork Collective aims to forge partnerships to institute a large-scale collection and recycling system, connecting essential industries and collaborators across the value chain. This initiative paves the way for a truly circular economy of natural cork, repurposing stoppers into materials that can keep significant amounts of CO2, retained by all real cork stoppers, sequestered for decades, while also supporting eco-friendly community projects such as playground revitalizations and sustainable packaging solutions.
Every year, cork oak forests absorb as much CO2 as driving 1.5 million cars all year would produce. By producing 1,000 natural wine corks we can remove around 250 pounds of CO2 from the atmosphere. Cork is hand-harvested from the bark of cork oak trees, making it a 100% natural and renewable resource. This sustainable material regrows, allowing for repeated harvesting without ever harming these trees, which can live more than 200 years.
Shockingly, less than one percent of all corks are recycled each year. When thrown out and sent to a landfill, corks naturally biodegrade, but with 13 billion corks produced annually worldwide—enough to circle the globe 10 times or reach the moon and back—the potential for recycling is immense.