Alterego in Maryland can discuss the feasibility of FSC certified hardwood, cork, bamboo, linoleum, or rubber floor materials for your yurt structure. The company is owned by architects who offer sustainable products with modern designs.

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The German Birki’s brand offers a large vegan all-age shoe collection that ranges from cork sandals to water-friendly clogs, and lots in between. Those special footbeds are made of cork, ALPRO®-cell or ALPRO®-foam, which are terrific shock absorbing materials.

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[Creative Commons photo by Claudio Matsuoka]

I’ve got a big bowl of corks in the kitchen that’s mocking me. They dare me to find a project to use them up. Well the joke’s on you, little corks! I didn’t just find one way to turn you into something new. I found ten.

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I like beer. I like pubs.

I guess that is why I am still talking about eco-friendly coasters. As I mentioned before we are doing some research on eco-friendly coasters for Intrepid Travel and now that research has lead me to cork coasters.

And this is the thing, cork has been around forever. According to the dictionary the origin of the word itself dates from between 1275–1325 AD.

This is an old material, but how many of us think of it as a green material? Hemp and Jute have also been around for a long, long time and they are considered green. Why not cork?

The thing that got me thinking about this are these core coaster from Americanna. When I asked Americanna if they had an eco-friendly coaster they immediately came back with cork.

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Somehow this doesn’t surprise me. Vintners are acutely aware of the health of their environment, their plants, and the resulting product. With the refined and particular tastes of many of their consumers, a lackluster wine will lead to lackluster profits. Beyond that though, their customers are, I would venture to guess, more likely to be of the LOHAS mindset, choosing what they consume based on more factors then simply the cheapest available. They want everything they touch to have thought, consciousness, and a lighter impact on the planet factored into them.

How can a wine be green? The grapes themselves can of course be organic, the growing method biodynamic. But what else?

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Cork is harvested from the outer layer of bark of the Cork Oak tree found mostly in the Mediterranean. The bark is harvested every ten years, with each harvest producing a softer batch of cork. By keeping these trees in production, they provide homes to wildlife in about 1800 acres of cork forests and provides many jobs to the people of who harvest the cork by hand. Cork is also 100% recyclable! Of course they can be used for these cool crafts, but companies like Yemm & Hart also collect donated wine corks to make products like tile flooring. This sustainability and ability to recycle make cork an environmentally conscious crafting choice!

These images are just a few cork crafts I discovered on Etsy! Check out their shops for even more!

1. Classic Chair Cork Coasters from Annacote
2. Cork Beehive Brooch from Ottoman
3. The UN-DIamond Cork Ring from Uncorked

Tell me about your cork crafts in a comment!

Cork is a great jewelry material. It is 100% recycled and recyclable, flexible, and water repellent.

Each piece is individually cut from a single block used for storage and display. Will fit men and women.

Sold by STUDIO 1 a.m. for $48

Designed & Made by Donna Piacenza

Buy recycled content or renewable materials.

• Bamboo and cork are renewable resources, as is wood when it is sustainably harvested.
• Look for carpets made from recycled materials or natural fibers. Rubber flooring is also made from recycled materials and can be recycled, or down-cycled (made into another product) afterwards.
• There are many types of all-natural linoleum available, and tiles can be manufactured with recycled content.
• Keep in mind that some materials need sealants or glues during the installation process that may not be so green, such as cork or stone. Others, like bamboo and wood, may contain additives such as formaldehyde, or are made of composites with undesireable materials such as vinyl, including some cork products and linoleum.

Look for salvaged materials.

• Flooring materials such as wood, stone and tile can often be found at building supply salvage centers. They may need some refurbishing and prep, but will be cheaper and greener than buying them new.

Maintenance and upkeep. This is a common consideration in all flooring decisions, but is even more important when thinking about green choices. For example:

• High trafficked areas will need a more durable material, but will also need to be cleaned more frequently. You’ll have to decide what types of cleaning products will be needed and if those are very eco-friendly.
• Wall-to-wall carpeting is a magnet for dust, dustmites and mold, decreasing the indoor air quality. An alternative could be using carpet tiles or area rugs.

The Green Home Guide lists several tips in helping you consider sustainable flooring for your home, pros and cons of different products, and a buyers guide to green flooring materials.

Additional Information and Resources:

Green Home Guide - 8 Tips for Selecting Healthy and Environmentally Sound Flooring

Green Home Guide - Navigating the Flooring Thicket: Find the Greenest Way to Meet Your Needs

Green Home Guide - Buyer’s Guide to Green Flooring Materials

Care2 - Salvaged Wood Flooring

Care2 - Rethinking Carpet

Green Living Ideas - Flooring

More from GO:

Guest Post: Building Supply Salvage Centers—Where a Bargain Lessens Your Carbon Footprint

Eco-Effective Decisions: Who Wants to Un-Screw the Cork?

What Grabs You: Non-Toxic Home Design!

How to Find a Green Builder – Part 1

How to Find a Green Builder — Part 2

Smart HomeOwner: Better Home, Better Planet

Modern Green Living - at your fingertips

Carnauba wax comes from a Coperinica Cerifera palm tree, known as the "Tree of Life," of northeastern Brazil. It grows in moist regions, such as riverbanks, and reaches 25-50 feet. The fan-shaped leaves of the palm exudes the wax to protect the plant from dehydration. Palm leaves are cut from mature trees, sun dried, and then mechanically thrashed to extract the wax. Each tree produces about one kilo of powdered wax per yearly cutting. Workers carefully remove only 20 leaves per tree yearly to ensure the plant is not endangered. Carnauba wax is used in cosmetics, food, automobile wax, dental floss, surfboard wax, etc. If you have ever eaten candy corn, you have eaten carnauba wax. Apply this product to your floors, and you could literally eat off of them.

Protex brand Premium Self-Polishing Wax can be used on all floor surfaces, such as hardwood, cork, linoleum, asphalt, cement, terrazzo, etc. After mopping my old maple floors, I lightly applied the carnauba wax to the dry floors with a mop. After 30 minutes, the floor was safe for traffic and looked beautiful. Water droplets beaded nicely on the surface, and the floor had a beautiful shine. I am so pleased to discover this natural home product.

Got a tip for Jennifer and Amy? Send it to them!

Cork, as we know it, comes from the outer cell layer of the bark on cork oak trees (Quercus Suber). The stopper layer is easily separated from the mother cells when the connecting layer (phelogen) becomes brittle. Once the bark (cork) is stripped off the tree in the late string and early summer, it renews itself naturally. An added bonus: each time cork is harvested, the tree stores more CO2 as a result of regenerating. It is reported that the tree stores 3-5 times more CO2 when harvested regularly.
The cork industry has found its home for centuries in the Mediterranean. Portugal has the world’s largest cork industry, yet it is an important forest crop to Italy, Spain, Algeria, France, Tunisia, and Morocco. The forests cover nearly 2.7 million hectares in total, and produce over 15 billion cork stoppers.

What’s the news? Due to “cork” alternatives, the cork industry is losing its intrigue as a cultural staple for wine bottle closures. The World Wide Fund reports that cork sales in the wine industry fell 20% between 2000 and 2005. Portugal has reported a severe drop in cork stoppers exported to Australia and the U.S. “New consumer trends and winemaking techniques, as well as more competitive markets, have led producers to look for more technical or cheaper closures – plastic ‘corks’ and metal screw tops”. Despite the optimal performance of cork as a stopper material- high elasticity, natural insulatinsulating qualities, light weight, and durability - the plastic and metal screw tops are becoming more accepted as standard wine closures to us consumers.

This increase in market share is leading to a decline in the global cork market, and thus degradation of cork oak forests that have (and could for years to come) provided one of the most diverse ecosystems and community-based industries of the region. They report that this could potentially lead to a loss of 60,000 jobs, and thus could severely harm the biodiversity of the forests.

Although the market demand for cork is slowly shifting to flooring and wall coverings, wine stoppers still account for about 70% of the industry profits. Whatever the reason might be, there is a reason that we still call a cork a cork, synthetic or woody. "We’re fighting back,” says Antonio Amorim, third generation owner of one of Portugals largest wine stopper producers. "We may have lost market share in some places but we are gaining in others.” "The shares, which shot up 79 percent in the past two years, are set to rise more as he wins back customers by virtually eliminating cork taint," said analyst Sonia Baldeira.

To help: do your best to find wine bottles that sustain the true cork community’s integrity and unscrew the cork.

To see more intensive case studies and future scenarios, view this pdf file.

For more information:

Amorim Corkfacts

WWF: Changing Markets

Amorim Cork

Images source: Amorim Corkfacts