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Cork was at one time
a common flooring product and because of its many benefits it is
enjoying a resurgence in popularity. While cork may be something
you haven't used other than to plug a wine bottle or set a drink on,
as flooring it has some impressive qualities to recommend it!
 With
more and more people "going green" or becoming environmentally
minded, cork flooring is being seen as an excellent choice because rather
than cutting down the whole tree, just the bark is used to make
cork. It is simply peeled off the tree every nine years, and will
then grow back without any harm to the tree in the process.
Surprising to many
people is the spectrum of patterns and textures that cork flooring
manufacturers have achieved. Colors also vary to an extent because
during manufacturing cork is actually baked in ovens. The longer
the cork is baked, the darker the color outcome.
Cork in the Home
Cork
flooring provides a wonderfully peaceful environment in home or
workplace because it acts as a natural shock and sound absorber. It
is durable and outlasts many other types of flooring. Natural air
pockets make cork great for insulating, trapping heat and staying
warm even when installed directly over concrete.
Maintenance of your
cork floor entails basic sweeping or vacuuming, and spills can
easily be wiped up with a sponge or paper towel.
Since the 1600's, when Benedictine monk Dom Perignon first thought
to seal a bottle of sparkling wine with cork instead of oiled rags,
it has been the wine bottle stopper of choice. Bowing to pressure by
supermarkets to protect against possible tainting, oxidation and
leakage, vintners throughout California, Europe, South America,
South Africa are replacing their natural cork with synthetics and in
doing so, endangering one of the last natural forest ecosystems in
Western Europe, and along with it an economy and culture that has
grown up around cork farming over thousands of years. In an effort
to conserve the cork-producing regions of Spain and Portugal, the
SmartWood program of the Rainforest Alliance has awarded its
first certification for sustainable management. Nine hundred and
twelve hectares (2,254 acres) of cork land managed by Fruticor -- a
group of small land owners and managers in the Alentejo cork region
of Portugal -- have been certified by SmartWood for meeting the
terms of the
Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) for responsible management.
The recent increase in demand for synthetic
cork by top wineries in the United States, including Beringer Wine
Estates, Clos Du Bois, Kendall-Jackson, Robert Mondavi, Sebastiani
Vineyards and others, has prompted concern that by threatening the
traditional cork industry, the new stoppers could undermine the
economic basis of cork farming and thereby the cork-producing areas
of the Iberian peninsula where cork oak forests (montados)
represent around 21% of the forest area and are responsible for the
production of more than 50% of the cork consumed worldwide. While in
the US, 10% of wine bottles are sealed with synthetic corks, that
number is expected to grow. Last year, Neocork Technologies,
manufacturer of synthetic cork, relocated its world headquarters to
Napa, California, where it will deliver an estimated 500 million
corks per year.
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"The economy, culture and environmental
sustainability of some of the last natural areas of the Iberian
peninsula rests on increased demand for sustainably produced cork,"
explains Jamie Lawrence, SmartWood's regional manager for Western
Europe. "The certification of Fruticor's management is a major step
towards conserving some of the last natural landscapes of Western
Europe along with key species of plants and animals."
"This is a major step for biodiversity
conservation and for the cork trade. Cork oak forests rank among the
first biodiversity hotspots in the Mediterranean and in Europe. At
the same time they are the backbone of an entire economy. FSC
certification will reinforce the already environmental-friendly
characteristics of the cork economy, leading to new opportunities in
cork markets," notes Nora Berrahmouni, coordinator of the World
Wildlife Fund's
Cork Oak Landscapes Programme.
Cork-growing lands tend to be models of
sustainable management. The cork oak tree (Quercus suber)
is unique in that its thick bark can be stripped off every decade to
extract the cork without damaging the trees, which live 170 to 250
years on average. Carried out by skilled craftsmen, the stripping
process has remained virtually unchanged for nearly 3,000 years. Not
only does the stripping yield the cork, but it maintains the forest
ecosystem, the structure and composition of which depends on human
interaction with the natural environment. Unless the cork is
stripped regularly, the bark ages too much and extracting it would
cause damage to the tree.
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The montados, where the cork oaks
thrive, are largely open swaths made up of grassland and scrub
vegetation interspersed by trees, where farmers have practiced a
low-intensity mix of agriculture and forestry for millennia. Careful
forest management not only provides for the continued extraction of
the cork oak but helps to create the conditions for a diverse range
of other products harvested from the woodlands. Villagers gather
edible fungi for their own consumption, use rockrose bushes for
firewood in their traditional stone bread ovens and tap local
beehives for honey flavored with native lavender and rosemary. On
even a small patch of cork land a farmer can raise a herd of goats,
a few cows and some pigs, which forage for acorns and graze beneath
the trees. Income from cork can represent anywhere from 30 to 100
percent of a farmer's income.
"Without the demand for cork, economic
pressures could force farmers to abandon the active management of
cork forests, which may lead to rural exodus as well as unbalance
the ecosystems that preserve the biodiversity of these Mediterranean
hotspots," says Lawrence.
"While some supermarkets and others have
claimed that the use of plastic in lieu of cork will contribute to
the forests' environmental protection, this is absolutely untrue,"
states Richard Donovan, Rainforest Alliance's chief of
forestry. "The certification of Fruticor and forests like it is
key because it means that Amorim, one of the world's largest cork
products manufacturers, which owns two manufacturing certified by
the SmartWood in 2004, will now have a supply of certified cork."
"The SmartWood/FSC certification for both cork
forests and industrial cork companies clearly meets the growing
market demand for sustainable natural products, especially from
major international distribution chains," explains Carlos de Jesus,
marketing and communications director for Amorim & Irmaos S.A. "But,
as importantly, it also validates the unique ability of cork to
contribute to the advance of crucial environmental, economic,
cultural and social aspects relevant to the entire Western
Mediterranean Basin. As such, we hope the FSC status recently
granted to Portuguese industrial and forestry companies inspires
organizations in other countries to realize that it is distinctly
possible to create wealth while protecting the environment." |
