Here's something pretty simple you can do this holiday season: Whether you're hosting friends and family at your home or giving wine as a gift, choose a bottle that's been sealed with a cork, not one with a screw cap.
The reasons, as explained by Wired Science, to choose a bottle sealed with a cork rather than a cap are many.
First off, cork is renewable, recyclable, and biodegradable. And cork oak forests are incredibly important to the environment. According to the article, "cork oaks soak up millions of tons of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas." And, of course, those caps take a lot of energy to manufacture.
So send a message by skipping the caps this holiday season. It's pretty easy to do—80 percent of the bottles are still sealed with corks.
Oh, and then you can do all sorts of neat stuff with corks after the wine is through. Try doing this with caps.
Read more about corks vs. caps here.
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Is there a way to tell pre-opening whether the cork is actual cork or if it's that plastic foam stuff? Maybe I'm just not buying high-enough quality wine. :)
Cork is actually going extinct because of overproduction that's why wine companies are switching, not because they're cheap. However, people still associate quality with cork which is why the transfer is taking so long. Think of how much goes into making a cork and how much goes into making a simple twist cap? Wines will also keep equally well with twist caps, so corks are out!
Lets see:
A wine that's corked also has a protective metal cap over the cork. A screw cap is just the protective metal cap itself.
A corked bottle can get "corked" - a screw cap never gets corked.
A bottle that you think is corked with cork could just be corked with a plastic cork - the plastic cork is used so that the wine won't get "corked".
So when you really think about it - although the cork is preferred, the screw cap is actually the more sound choice.
I've also heard that it is better for the wine to be in a screw capped bottle instead of a corked one.
Please read this: http://bit.ly/1l6qIK
Screw cap wine bottles also make it easier to repurpose the actual bottle. I use mine to serve water when I have friends over, corked bottles can make that just annoying enough to prefer screw caps.
And give up most of my New Zealand wines?? No, thanks!
Somewhat disappointed this post was done on Re-Nest. It can be difficult, for sure, but it is necessay look at the entire product lifecycle before accepting a claim that something is "renewable".
Remember bamboo?
http://hubpages.com/hub/Is_Bamboo_a_Sustainable_Building_Material
Yes, indeed it's about the whole lifecycle, not just one single aspect of a product.