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Environmental Issues

 

As wineries and wine consumers seek the natural essence of wine and grow more environmentally aware, the use of ProCork products provides the opportunity to embrace the whole concept of natural and still ensure quality is maintained in every bottle.

 

In improving environmental practices, the wine industry focuses on vineyard and winery issues - water, pesticide, herbicide, chemical usage, runoff and waste water as well as the key areas of packaging.

 

Cork is a product that has all the environmental benefits you could ask for. It is light weight, natural, recycled, a greenhouse gas sink and its use protects wildlife. Wine sealed in this way promotes a high class environmental image. You can't get more organic than cork.

 

A complete life cycle study conducted in Germany by The Institute for Applied Ecology, Freiburg, where the environmental impact of natural wine cork and screwcap were compared, came out in favour of cork. 

 

The study concluded: "Cork closures perform considerably better than aluminium screwcaps across the most environmentally-relevant criteria and key environmental problem areas (resource depletion, contribution to the greenhouse effect, and their tendency to contribute to acidification)."

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This study was backed up by an extensive PricewaterhouseCoopers/Ecobilan Life Cycle Analysis study in 2008 which found cork was the best performer in 6 of 7 environmental indicators including releasing 24 times less greenhouse gas than screwcap, 9 times less greenhouse gas than plastic cork and using 4 times less non-renewable energy than screwcap and plastic cork. The only environmental indicator it did not lead in was water consumption where it used 90% more water than screwcap.

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References:

Life Cycle Assessment – Natural Cork v Aluminium Screwcap, The Institute for Applied Ecology, Freiburg Germany, 1996

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Evaluation of the environmental impacts of Cork Stoppers versus Aluminium and Plastic Closures PricewaterhouseCoopers/Ecobilan, 2008. Read Report Here

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