Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogle Bomb here. You may or may not have heard a rumor that the world supply of cork is dwindling. Cork, which is made from the bark of the cork oak tree or querk asu bear, is used in a variety of products, the most common being wine stoppers. So is there any truth behind the idea that we're running out of cork? Not at all. There's actually an abundance of
this totally sustainable, eco friendly material. In fact, if you've ever traveled to the rural areas of southern Portugal, where most of the world's cork oak trees are grown, you've seen firsthand that the supposed shortage of the cork supply is a myth. Insiders in the cork industry, which employs and estimated thirty thousand workers in varied jobs, confirmed that there are plenty of cork oak trees to be found in the sustainable and environmentally harvested cork forests of Portugal.
Regular planting in shores continuous and steady supply, but the process requires some patients. A newly planted cork oak trees need on average more than twenty five years of growth before their bark can first be harvested. Farmers must then wait another nine or ten years until the trees fully recover and are ready to have their outer bark layer harvested again. This approach yield a high quality raw material while enabling the trees to live about three hundred years.
The takeaway there are said to be enough cork trees today in the sustainable cork forests of Portugal to last more than a hundred years. Translation, there's enough harvestable cork right this very moment to seal all of the wine bottles produced in the world for the coming century. So what led to the rumor that the world is running out?
In nine the Portuguese government began to protect the cork tree by law from improper or out of season harvest because officials were worried the developers would clear out the cork forests to build. To stop this from happening, the government declared the cork oak tree endangered at that time.
But more recently, something that might have fueled the rumble about a cork shortage or that cork is endangered and at risk of extinction, is that many companies in the wine industry began switching from traditional cork stoppers to plastic corks and screw caps. The reason a cork is much more expensive compared with the alternatives because it can be harvested only once a year by skilled farmers. Plus, using plastic or screw cap alternatives to cork pretty much removes
the danger of losing wine due to cork rot. That's when natural cork starts falling apart and let's air into the wine bottle, which can ruin the wine. And that's really one of the two things you're supposed to be looking for when a server pours you. The first taste of a bottle at first, is it the bottle you ordered? Second?
Is at vinegar instead of wine. The changeover to cork alternatives started happening in force in the nine nineties, but wineries had to convince people and wine drinkers in particul ler that it would be more beneficial to use the plastic corks or screw caps to seal wine bottles rather than cork stoppers. It's possible that some wineries began insinuating that cork is endangered so that more people might be
willing to choose wines sealed with screw caps. The truth is the cork tree is not endangered, and because some winters prefer screw caps for various reasons, that's actually led to a decrease in demand for cork wine stoppers. So there's actually an abundance of cork and cork oak trees. And here's the cool part. That abundance has opened up a world of opportunity for the impermeable, lightweight, and moisture
resistant material. Today, cork handbags and wallets are becoming popular leather alternatives, and cork is also used in flooring, shoes and other vegan accessories. Today's episode was written by Windy Bowman and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radios How Stuff Works. For more on this and lots of other plentiful topics, visit our home planet
how stuff Works dot com. And for more podcasts for my heart radio, visit that I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.