Put A Cork In It

George — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 14:00:43 +0000

Now, I’m not what anybody would call a tree-hugger or anything like that, but I do support recycling. When it comes to the plethora of corks in our house, my wife recycles most of them into craft projects (which can be found and purchased at her Etsy store found here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/thegoodwineartist). If, however, you are not as…craft inclined as my wife, but you still want to recycle after you’ve enjoyed a bottle of wine you can of course place the glass in a recycling bin, but you may not know that the corks can be recycled as well.

Right now the California Wine Club has a program to recycle corks, and you can even get benefits from sending them your corks, including discounts on wine club memberships and footwear from SOLES. The best part is that if the Cork Drive can get 20 million corks by the end of September, they’re going to plant 1000 cork trees in the Mediterranean cork forests to celebrate.

To send in your corks just call 1-800-777-4443 or send an email to corkdrive@cawineclub.com and they’ll send you an envelope. Just be sure to tell them how many corks you have so that they can send you a big enough envelope. It’s that easy.

To learn more, including the importance of cork trees, you can visit the Cork Drive website at http://www.cawineclub.com/cork-drive . Thanks to everybody that sends in corks and if you do, leave a comment and say how many you sent in, I’m curious to see how many can get sent in.

Wine Bottle Recycling

George — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 17:00:45 +0000

Now I know the title of this blog post might be a little misleading, but I’m not talking about putting your empty wine bottles in your recycling bin (which you should do if you’re getting rid of them though). I’m talking about ways you can use your wine bottles after you’ve already emptied them of all the good stuff.

First, there are wine cork trivets. My wife and I have a lot of corks lying around our house, and given as we do a lot of cooking at home, we figured a great way to use those wine corks was to turn them into trivets for placing hot pots, pans, and baking sheets.

To make, simply use a glue gun to connect the corks to each other, making a square, rectangle, or whatever shape you happen to prefer. You can use a mold like the image above, or just glue them together without one.

For the wine bottles themselves, there are a few things you can do. What my wife and I do is take the wine bottles that we like and place them above our kitchen cabinets to fill in the space between them and the ceiling. This is a great way to fill in empty space and to keep a reminder of the wines that you’ve had for future reference.

As you can see from our kitchen cabinets, we really like wine. You can stagger, stack, or line up the bottles however best fits your taste and your kitchen. When you’ve filled up the entire area, you can either find new places to keep the bottles, or start switching out older bottles for newer ones that you like better.

Finally, you can turn your wine bottles into lamps. Using either lights or oil, your wine bottles can light up your house or your backyard after the sun’s gone down and you’re still outside with friends enjoying a bottle of vino.

Photo Taken By: Wenona Napolitano

For a lighted lamp, you’ll need to drill into the base of the bottle using a special diamond drill bit. After you’ve created a hole large enough, feed in the lights (Christmas lights work the best) and decorate the bottle however you prefer.

For an oil lamp, you can purchase wicks designed to fit into a wine bottle. Simply fill the bottle with lamp oil (available at your local hardware store), add the wick, and light. Personally, I prefer citronella oil in my wine bottle lamps as it’s great for lighting my deck or patio and keeping the bugs away.

If you’ve got other ways to reuse your wine bottles and corks, I’d love to hear about it. Send ideas and pictures to me and I may just feature them on my site.

The Good Wine Guru » wine corks

Put A Cork In It

Wine Bottle Recycling