Put a Cork In It, welcomes Liberty Wine Merchants

February 11th, 2012

We’d like to welcome our newest participant, Liberty Wine Merchants on Commercial Drive!

If you haven’t had a chance to visit, be sure to check out their great new location at 1622 Commercial Drive. Their beautiful new millwork holds a great selection of unique wines. And, in step with reducing their environmental footprint through measures like their energy efficient LED lighting, they are now also collecting your used corks for our program. Check it out and ask them about the benefits of getting a customer number while you’re at it.

Cheers!

 

Dave Gerry interviews Ian McSorley about Put A Cork In It

November 30th, 2011

Award-winning broadcaster, Dave Gerry interviews Ian McSorley about the Put A Cork In It wine cork recycling program in Vancouver BC. In this video, he also interviews Gina Ness, manager of Havana Restaurant on Commercial Drive — one of the original participants in the program — and catches their bartenders shooting corks into our container.

Great stuff. Enjoy!

Note: This video was produced before we had test results back from the laser cutting contractor, which as you’ll see in our June 20 post, were unsuccessful. So, we’re still in search of the best method of cutting the corks into tile-sized discs. If you have a solution, we’d love to hear from you!

New Wine Cork Recycling Locations in Okanagan

November 19th, 2011

view from Soaring Eagle Winery, Penticton, BCWe are pleased to announce that we now have our first 3 participants in the Penticton area of the Okanagan. You can now drop your used wine corks off at Soaring Eagle Winery at 1751 Naramata Road, Penticton; Campbell Mountain Landfill at 901 Spiller Road, Penticton; or Valentine Farm, 10216 Gould Ave, Summerland.

Rumour has it that folks in the Okanagan have an amazing appetite for good, better and best wines, so we’re anticipating a large volume of recycled wine corks. For all of you wine aficionados doing your part to uncork those fine vintages and keep those corks out of the waste stream, we salute you!

See our Okanagan Locations map for details. Cheers!

Best of Vancouver!

September 27th, 2011

Georgia Straight Best of Vancouver 2011While munching a slice of pizza on the Drive last week, my friend said, “Hey, Put a Cork In It is in the Georgia Straight’s Best of Vancouver list. Check it out!” If you take a look at page 43 or scroll about half way down on their Contributors Picks page you’ll see “Best use of a cork”.

It’s heart-warming to know that, while I’m stock-piling drums of old wine corks and trying to solve technical challenges of remanufacturing them in Vancouver rather than trucking them to Ontario, others think this may be a worthwhile initiative.

I think it is, but sometimes you wonder if you’re more than a little bit crazy for pursuing these schemes! Anyways, thanks for your endorsement and encouragement Georgia Straight. Cheers!

Boathouse Bar Surfaced with Cork ‘Tiles’

June 28th, 2011

cork tiles surface bar at Boathouse Restaurant on Kits BeachThe Boathouse Restaurant at Kits Beach has a bar that is faced with cork ’tile’ discs. This is a beautiful example of the exact appearance of the process we are currently in search of shearing equipment for.

These natural cork discs are applied to a mesh backing sheet similar to ceramic tiles that are supplied by the square foot. The sheet of cork discs is bonded with tile adhesive and grouted, just as you would any tile floor or counter back splash surface.

Great looking and durable. Check it out.

Manufacturer Located to Assemble Tile Sheets

June 22nd, 2011

prototype cork tile discs beside production ceramic tile discs

We have sourced a Vancouver, BC tile manufacturer that has the capacity to assemble sheets of cork tiles similar to the test sample you see here.

These prototype discs were manually cut with a sharp kitchen knife and glued to drywall patching mesh with a hot glue gun. They were sanded with an orbital sander and sealed with 2 coats of urethane.

They were cut to the same thickness as the white production run ceramic tiles you see in the background. Coincidentally, they are also nearly the same diameter and spacing, suggesting that these could be combined nicely.

With the ability to assemble these mesh-backed sheets of cork ’tiles’, our current stumbling block is the cutting process. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, if you have suggestions for a suitable method of cutting these discs, we’d love to hear from you!

Laser-cutting Failed!

June 20th, 2011

cork cut with laser burnedIn my search for a suitable method to trim used wine corks into uniformly thick discs with finished surfaces, I contacted a firm with laser cutting equipment. They took a batch of natural corks and synthetic stoppers to experiment with.

I had hoped the laser cutting would provide a clean surface that needed no additional finishing, but results suggest this method is not a suitable option. Read the rest of this entry »

Searching for cork slicing equipment

May 30th, 2011

wine corks sliced into discs suitable for cork flooring tilesCalling all process engineering experts!

We’re looking for cork slicing equipment that would be suitable for trimming used wine corks into consistent thickness discs similar to the ones shown in this photo.

If you can recommend the best equipment or process to accomplish this — or if you operate equipment in the lower mainland area of British Columbia, we’d love to hear from you!

We are also looking for remanufacturing processes suitable for the synthetic wine stoppers that find their way into the natural corks we collect. So ideally this equipment would also be suitable for synthetic stoppers.

If you have equipment that you think would be suitable, please let us know and we can provide a batch of natural corks and synthetic stoppers for testing.

Synthetic stoppers should look synthetic

December 16th, 2010

Manufacturers of synthetic wine stoppers have done a great job of matching the appearance of natural cork. Great aesthetic, but this is a real problem when it comes to separating natural and synthetic corks for recycling.

All 4 corks shown in the right of this photo are synthetic. You can see how good a match the second cork is to the natural one on the far left. However the 3 on the right are all obviously synthetic. When it comes to manually sorting wine stoppers the best solution is a quick visual difference.

Despite the best efforts of our cork recyclers, synthetic stoppers still make up about 20% of the total volume we collect and when they’re a close visual match to natural cork it really slows down the sorting process. To date there is no automated method to sort these material since their characteristics are very similar.

Calling all process innovators — if you have a method in mind, we’d love to hear from you!

Napa wineries give back the cork

November 9th, 2010

The Napa Valley Wine Train has diverted over 70% of their waste stream by recycling. Part of that recycling includes all their natural wine corks. Their contribution is part of the ~22 million corks recycled annually by ReCORK America. Watch this revealing video.