- If you are a wine producer, join this initiative and help preserve a unique natural and cultural heritage
What you can do
Everyone can choose cork
products
Choose cork
Cork harvesting is an environmentally friendly process during which not a single tree is cut down.
In addition, because of their economic value, local communities take care of the cork oak forests. This helps reduce the risk of fires and desertification.
Everybody can help save the precious cork oak landscapes of the Mediterranean and protect them against desertification, fires and other threats which could lead to their disappearance.
Bottle-stoppers
It is crucial that demand for cork bottle-stoppers is maintained.
Above all, you can choose cork products.
The wine industry can promote the use of cork bottle-stoppers in recognition of the environmental and socio-economic value of cork oak landscapes.
Cork producers, meanwhile, must improve the quality of cork stoppers, especially by addressing wine taint and leakage, and communicating progress to the wine industry and consumers.
Wine drinkers have to demand that their favourite wine store stocks bottles with cork stoppers.
This all needs to be combined with improved management and restoration of cork oak landscapes, including certification by the
Forest Stewardship Council (FSC).
Both the cork and the wine industry can help by supporting the FSC certification effort.
WWF supports cork because it is natural and recyclable and it supports jobs and biodiversity.
By choosing cork you:
- support 100,000 livelihoods in the Mediterranean region;
- guard against desertification, fires, and a number of serious environmental threats facing Europe.
