Now cork is experiencing a revival as more industries look for sustainable alternatives to plastic and other materials derived from fossil fuels.
...
The cork oak’s thick bark adapted to defend the tree from fire, making it a powerful insulating material that’s been used to shield fuel tanks on NASA spacecraft and electric car batteries.
...
Several studies found that cork is carbon negative, meaning it can store more carbon than what is required to produce it.
Carbon negative seems like a misnomer, since all of the carbon that a tree absorbs literally becomes a part of its mass. Since mass is conserved (mass can't come from nowhere, and it can't be destroyed), how is it possible for the trees to store more carbon than what is required to produce them?
You're missing out on meeting a lot of great people. Some of the most iconic thinkers of our collective history have seemingly offended you with their footwear.
What else have you been missing out on in life due to undue judgement?
Does anyone else remember there being stories in past about increased cork production being unsustainable as in not enough availability and quality was getting lower? Or am I remembering wrong.
Cork can be grown and harvested sustainably, as long as there are enough trees (which live ~300 years) to meet demand (cork is bark harvested like shearing sheep).
> Another interesting option in this realm is mycelium, which could be better scaled on an industrial level.
I, for one, welcome our industrial biological process overlords.
Especially in the cases where it supplants the more traditional kind that often involves lots of animal cruelty. I have no intrinsic objection to eating steak from a disembodied vat-muscle.
When it comes to industrial processes, I have zero faith that a biological alternative will end up being better than synthetics, in the same way how certified organic products are still allowed to use “approved” chemicals, many of which are even more toxic or harmful than the conventional solutions they are meant to replace.
There's not enough cork, nor will there ever be, to make a meaningful dent in total plastic consumption (in current terms).
We produce 380M tons of plastic per year. IIUC, that's about the size of the entire lumber industry - of which cork is a very small insignificant percentage.
Cork has a very small part of the planet where it grows well, and basically everything else valuable grows well there, too...
The Nanocrystalline Cellulose market will be bigger than cork by 2030 probably - and even that is 25 years away from making a real dent in plastic consumption (aggressively).
To be fair, we don't need it to overtake, or even come close to, the entire plastic industry. It'd already be nice if it, and other sustainable materials, could chip away at different uses of petroplastics.
I don’t know about printing but there’s various methods for liquifying and expanding cork. E.g. spray cork insulation and moldable cork ski boot liners.
> We produce 380M tons of plastic per year. IIUC, that's about the size of the entire lumber industry - of which cork is a very small insignificant percentage.
Any material looking to fulfill that demand will start from that position; why would anyone be producing the material if they didn't already have that market? Every new thing starts from zero; plastics were at zero too, at one time.
That confuses the market with the product. Oil has been used for a long time too, but the modern oil market didn't exist until the last ~~150 years. If cork became a substitute for plastics, that would be a new market.
If you don't drink a lot of wine in one sitting and have bottles that have been opened, corks seem to average out to being better for re-sealing the bottle -- specifically if you're placing them horizontally, like in a wine cooler. I've found screw caps frequently tend to leak, even over a single evening. Even with the hole from the corkscrew, the cork tends to reseal better from my experience.
With that said, I am talking about actual cork and not the plastic versions; Those will seep just as bad as screw caps.
If you like wine and don't kill bottles in one sitting, I think the preferred resealing option are those rubber stoppers held in place by vacuum. Probably regardless of original packaging.
I try to avoid having bottles sit around opened, so generally when we open one, the idea is to finish it in a day or two. The vacuum stoppers are good, but honestly, it's so much simpler to just stick the original wooden cork back in, give it a good slap to make sure it's in there, and put the bottle back in the cooler until the next evening.
If I was storing opened bottles for longer than a day or two, I'd probably make heavier use of the vacuum stoppers, but I'm in that midpoint of the spectrum where I neither need the fancy tools, but still need something more than the cheap solution.
Vinophiles are now considered 'hipsters'? Is there any less hipster crowd than uber-wealthy wine collectors, a hobby dating back generations, if not centuries?
Screw caps are superior anyway. A better seal, easier to open, easier to reseal. It's good to see some reasonably good wines adopting screw tops in spite of tradition/inertia.
They are not superior. Convenient in certain circumstances, perhaps.
For example if one cannot be bothered to use, or does not have a corkscrew handy, a screw cap might be preferred for some.
I know it is difficult for most Modern Americans to use a corkscrew. Even more difficult is being able to appreciate the complexities and effort that goes into making good, traditional wine. Best to do away with tradition for the sake of convenience.
PFAS are a specific family of chemicals unsuitable for this application.
No significant amount of microplastics is likely to develop from the mild abrasion of opening and closing a wine bottle a handful of times. And if your risk tolerance is so low that you are worried about that largely theoretical concern, you probably should not be drinking wine at all (because we have quite concrete evidence that alcohol is unhealthy -- unlike microplastics).
I would be (much) more worried about chunks of plastic getting in my wine from those fake cork products than from screw tops.
Once opened, they do not reseal as well as real cork.
This isn't a huge deal, because a separate tool made specifically for resealing wine bottles is better than either. But if you don't drink a whole bottle of wine at once, and you don't have such a tool, cork reseals better.
idk new hampshire cans sold out to coke. pennsylvania still makes the bottled ones and i believe theyre still sugar.....but it dosent taste the same. the new hampshire product was superior. coke nerfed it to nothing.
I believe you. I didn’t experience the switchover, but the real sugar/original recipe “Throwback” from about a decade ago was yummy. Can’t get it anymore, though.
Ironically synthetic cork would be much better used in high end bottles, as you don’t have th problem of one occasionally disintegrating and ruining a bottle that’s been maturing for decades. The amount of speciality products around wine corks is prettty insane, all the various removal devices and sealers, etc. A simple, impervious (Mylar lined?) screw top would be the actual best for both practical and “archival” purposes.
> very similar arc to "plastic bags are bad, save the trees!" -> "plastic is bad, paper is renewable!"
Over four decades, environmentalists have simply won the discussion. 99% of paper products made in the US are made using farmed wood. Now paper is renewable enough that I don't worry about putting it in the trash (since I know we have an incinerator).
Still uses petrochemicals for harvesting and processing, there's definitely a risk that certain kinds of tree farms are counterproductive. I don't think that's ever really broadly been the case though, it sounds like a whitepaper released by a thinktank funded by a plastic company to me. Those often get repackaged into low effort local news, it's not surprising that people get so confused.
But also environmentalists aren't the ones pushing for paper straws, it's mostly greenwashing by large corps and governments. Though from a conservation perspective, less plastic waste is probably a good thing for waterways and the life that depends on them (including us).
I suppose they are, in the sense that I would wave a magic wand that replaced plastic in all applications where it was not being used as a critical material with a more expensive but more sustainable alternative.
Straws I guess get wrapped up in that, though I'd sooner just not use a straw and don't see why that's not the default. Seems strange to me that adult humans want a goofy plastic tube in order to make drinking liquid enjoyable enough.
To me the bigger issues are single use plastic cups and bottles, to which I say elimination and alternatives like water bottles and aluminum cans, paper cups, aluminum cups (did you know you can buy aluminum solo cups?), and glassware can really meet almost every need. It's a matter of volume and pollution versus real net utility versus the technology they replace.
There's some advanced plastics and things for packaging that are cool, but they don't need to be on every single thing.
I remember there being an issue where in some parts of the world the cork quality was not sufficient for wine bottles so screw caps had become more popular. Probably for the best, screw caps really seem better for everyone.
I was just posting in another comment that I remember all kinds of warning about the world running out of cork, which led to wines shipping with plastic or synthetic corks. The general thought, at least from the things I heard, was only really good wine had a real cork, as the cheap ones couldn’t afford it.
Hopefully this isn’t some kind of Mandela effect. I don’t think it is.
There are always niche alternatives to anything, here and there. But unless we're talking about a new technology or some other fundamental change in circumstances, they are alternatives rather than the primary choice for a reason.
Cork has a little overlap with a few plastic use-cases, but only slightly. It requires far more effort to produce than a plastic equivalent, and is simply not suited to most use cases.
I do look forward to some cork alternatives to plastic where it makes sense. But I hardly expect it to make any meaningful difference to overall plastic use.
If you start outlawing plastics due to their harm, the alternative becomes the primary choice. I don’t think we need to argue plastic incurred harm, it should be obvious.
If the harm of outlawing a useful product exceeds the harm done by that product then even greater harm is done through the prohibition.
Plastics are ESSENTIAL for everything from medical devices, electrical insulation, to pipes. There are simply no alternatives. We are not going to replace PE or PVC jacketing for wires with cork.
And yet, the EPA is working towards restricting the use of or potentially outlawing vinyl chloride, a key ingredient in PVC. Nothing is impossible, and essential might be relative, depending on use case.
Of course, cork isn’t the solution to all plastic use cases, just a potential replacement in some use cases. Like phasing out combustion vehicles, you have to signal that you’re forcing the sunset of the material so alternatives are identified and supply chains can reconfigure accordingly.
IF the EPA bans vinyl chloride all that means is instead of manufacturing PVC pellets in the USA we will import them from some place else. The EPA banning the use of PVC is about as realistic as banning the use of cardboard or paper. It is bewildering to me how many people think you can just ban an essential material and magically come up with an equivalent substitute. That is not how the real world works.
In the case of asbestos the harm was much greater and the substitutes much better and more readily available and the use range of the original material was much narrower.
The blind, ignorant hate for "plastics" online just goes to show how people can be led to believe anything.
For example polyethylene, used in milk jugs and water pipes is absolutely harmless. You could swallow a fist full of PE pellets per day and they would simply pass right through you unchanged. This is a scientific fact. If a PE container can hold concentrated sulfuric acid your stomach is going to do nothing to it. Yet for some reason drinking out of a plastic milk jug is bad because some random person online said so.
What about it? It is disconcerting how so many people on HN don't understand basic economics. If we want to replace "plastics" for some reason then we need to come up with a superior alternative not an inferior one. Since you raised the question, what about hemp makes it a realistic solution to insulating wire? Can it be thermoplastically extruded? Is it really so hard to see how growing hemp plants, harvesting the fiber, weaving the fiber into braided insulation, that is more porous and susceptible to compromise by moisture than any plastic is an inferior solution?
It is really bizarre to me how people online have jumped in the plastic hate bandwagon with zero understanding of how industrial processes that make the modern world possible actually work.
Why not replace the dirty rubber in tires with wooden wheels?
It’s not the worst thing to assume good faith when somebody asks a follow up question. Especially here.
You might even assume that the person asking might not know your pet peeve trigger subject too well.
There’s even a chance they were genuinely curious to understand your point of view — until, through a rude rant-reply, they realised they were speaking to a tormented Twitter chatbot and dropped the subject instead.
What percentage of plastic consumption is embodied in the examples and other non replaceable forms, and what percentage isn't. Your reasoning is incomplete in arguing because SOME uses are irreplaceable right now that no replacement is possible or helpful.
Vinyl flooring exists because linoleum was superseded but it stands as an example of a niche where cork did function. I know why people wanted to stop using linoleum, it doesn't mean it doesn't "work"
It's fairly well sourced. Some examples of harm from plastics, mostly on the environment:
> Degradation (changes in the ecosystem state) and modifications of marine systems are associated with loss of ecosystem services and values.
> in 2019, production and incineration of plastic will contribute greenhouse gases in the equivalent of 850 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere
> For example, in Bangkok flood risk increases substantially because of plastic waste clogging the already overburdened sewer system.
> Marine wildlife such as seabirds, whales, fish and turtles mistake plastic waste for prey; most then die of starvation as their stomachs become filled with plastic. They also suffer from lacerations, infections, reduced ability to swim, and internal injuries.
> When analyzing the effect of polyethylene microbeads (origin: cosmetic exfoliants) on the aquatic macrophyte L. minor, no effect on photosynthetic pigments & productivity was found, but root growth and root cell viability decreased.
But this one's about humans:
> By affecting the thyroid hormone axis, BPA exposure can lead to hypothyroidism.
For perspective on the numbers in that map, the first meter of each of those square kilometers of water weighs 1,024,000,000 kg. (At least, using the first number for sea water density I could find.)
The article is heavy on cork production, light on use cases.
>“Compared with materials like polyurethane foam [used for thermal insulation], products made with cork require less energy and produce less CO2 emissions.”
Polyurethane foam is used for thermal insulation in a few places. But fiberglass is still the champion of that sector, and it's older than plastic and more durable and abundant than cork. More often, polyurethane is used for couch cushions, cheap mattresses, and shoes, which are difficult use-cases for cork — Birkenstocks have a cult following but poor water resistance.
>used to shield fuel tanks on NASA spacecraft and electric car batteries.
And this about wraps it up.
There are probably some good use cases for cork, but the major advantage of plastic is the ability to do so much with so little. An LDPE bag of the sort now banned in California weighs about six grams. I can't think of many things you could do with six grams of cork that don't involve grapes.
I wouldn't write off cork as insulation so easily -- fluffy insulation (fiberglass and cellulose) doesn't cover every scenario.
For example, Washington State's energy code now requires continuous exterior insulation. Putting a continuous layer of rigid insulation on the outside of the building reduces heat loss due to thermal bridging (conduction through the studs).
The most common material for this purpose, in the US anyway, is foam (polystyrene or polyisocyanurate). Other options are mineral wool, fiberboard, and cork. Mineral wool and fiberboard are pretty expensive compared to foam and I imagine that cork would be similar or even more expensive. But a cool thing about cork is that it can double as both insulation and cladding. I don't know if that makes it an economical choice, but someone's marketing cork for this purpose right here in Washington [1].
Stupid question : trees are effectively corals, pumping sugar from air with light and getting water + trace minerals from the ground. Wood/cork is basically the dead mmtisdue extruded by the living outer layer.
What would it take to "unfold" something like a tree into a continously harvest able square with leaves and hydroponic roots still attached?
I once commented that HN is the most wonderfully diverse ecosystem and here's my chance to prove myself right! I'm a cork 'farmer' in Coruche, right where this article is situated. I wasn't expecting to read a puff piece about it today. I just did my novennial harvest last year. For anyone not in the know, cork is the cork trees' bark, and it's stripped from the tree without harming it every nine years. Undressing the tree is properly medieval work and you need to be very skilled with a hatchet to do it. Do a poor job and you'll ruin the cork and scar the tree for decades.
The harvest is tough work but it's the only well-paid trade left in agriculture. I doubt it has much future beyond fodder for high peasant magazine articles. Trees are dying left and right from multiple climate-related problems no one has a handle on. Divestment from the traditional montado like mine into intensive production units with better water management and automated extraction is the likely future. The billion-dollar outfits have started experiments with high-density groves, inspired by the olive oil industry's success. It's a finicky tree though, so conclusive results are taking a few decades more than you'd expect to materialise. They're stuck having to buy cork from thousands of traditionalist family farms for now.
But that's assuming the industry even grows enough to justify the investment into better plantations. Legitimate uses for the stuff apart from wine corks are scarce. We're all hoping that our phenomenal ecological footprint will see us grow as an industry into everything from insulation and roofing to shopping bags and umbrellas (hence said puff piece I imagine). We'll see, it really is a phenomenal material and the carbon math makes sense at the source. You can almost see the tree sucking out stuff from the air and soil to build thicker layers of bark. I joke that we've been doing regenerative farming for generations, we just didn't know it until someone told us.
If anyone on HN is ever in Portugal and wants to visit a montado, happy to take y'all on the most boring tour of your life. But we can have a nice picnic! It's lovely country.
If you mean the old-school cork flooring made up of glue-on squares, it's great stuff. I have it and love it to bits. I don't think more than a dozen people per year worldwide install it at this point :) I hope it comes back into fashion.
The newer multi-layer flooring is indistinguishable from plastic flooring. No point to it.
It seems that farming, like war, is mostly boredom punctuated by hard physical work and terror. I'm actually glad to see cork is still in demand for the wine industry, there was a period of time when many wineries were switching to caps. Australia uses very little cork for their bottling (apparently wombats like to burrow under the trees).
I know another founder based in Lisbon so look out, if I'm ever there!
As a 'new resident' of Portugal, something I've come to appreciate is the understanding of the land that is part of Portuguese culture. I would imagine that such sympathy is a great opportunity, given how important sustainable farming (and sustainable everything else) is to our future.
Welcome to Portugal! Even though I'm a farmer, I'm a city rat myself but yeah, we're blessed with great places to visit and especially eat :) My email is on a few other comments, feel free to get in touch if you need any help settling in. I'm based in Lisbon and always happy to be of service.
This is interesting. I had always heard that removing a tree’s bark, even just a ring around the trunk, would kill it, as it could no longer get nutrients up to the rest of the tree.
Would it be correct to say the cork is a protective layer over the part of the tree that does that nutrient transport, and most trees don’t allow for this kind of separation? Or maybe the average person just isn’t knowledgeable and skilled enough to make the distinction when removing bark?
On a side note, I’m happy to see cork is harvested sustainably and Portugal has such long standing laws in place to protect it. Many years ago I heard wines were moving away from cork because the world was going to run out, and it seemed like plastic and synthetic cork was becoming more popular in cheaper wine. Lately I’ve been seeing cork more often, so either we were lied to years ago, or something changed. Either way, I’m happy to see the change. I’ve always thought cork was a pretty cool material.
I couldn't comment on the biological aspect, to be honest. What I can say is that cork bark, compared to other trees, grows extremely thick, porous, wet and flexible. I've never seen anything like this process done to another tree species.
It's also worth it to say that young trees need to be de-corked once (when they're around 20 years old) before they'll produce useable cork. It grows much smoother after this first peel, which looks a lot more like normal bark (just much thicker).
The world is swinging back to natural materials, for better or worse. I'm biased of course but in this case I'm a fan purely because the physical properties are so good and there's so much space to make it more economical to consumers.
That’s interesting about the young cork. I saw that it can take a couple harvests to get something good.
I had a bottle of wine a few months ago with a really bad cork. It did seem more like bark. I guess I can assume that came from a younger tree, borderline too young maybe.
It's possible that it was a composite cork, made from leftover bits ground and put in a polymer binder. Or like you said, poor selection at the factory. Hope the wine was still ok!
I can't stress how boring the Montado is - really just a very sparse, quiet forest. But you're welcome to visit! You can find my email on this thread, drop me a line.
Weirdly I was talking to a building surveyor recently about how there are new building insulation products coming out made out of cork[1] and some made out of mycelium (fungus)[2]. So instead of insulating your walls using something like polystyrene which is pretty gross to work with (produces a lot of nasty polystyrene dust when you sand it down etc) you can have a lovely natural product that is sustainable and also has similar thermal and (istr better) flame-retardant properties.
136 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 196 ms ] threadWhat else have you been missing out on in life due to undue judgement?
I talk about shoes, you talk about your attitude.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cork_(material)
But there are risks: https://apsjournals.apsnet.org/doi/10.1094/PDIS-03-16-0408-F...
Another interesting option in this realm is mycelium, which could be better scaled on an industrial level.
I, for one, welcome our industrial biological process overlords.
Especially in the cases where it supplants the more traditional kind that often involves lots of animal cruelty. I have no intrinsic objection to eating steak from a disembodied vat-muscle.
We produce 380M tons of plastic per year. IIUC, that's about the size of the entire lumber industry - of which cork is a very small insignificant percentage.
Cork has a very small part of the planet where it grows well, and basically everything else valuable grows well there, too...
The Nanocrystalline Cellulose market will be bigger than cork by 2030 probably - and even that is 25 years away from making a real dent in plastic consumption (aggressively).
It's orders of magnitude away from even taking out 1%.
Any material looking to fulfill that demand will start from that position; why would anyone be producing the material if they didn't already have that market? Every new thing starts from zero; plastics were at zero too, at one time.
It's not a new market.
If you don't drink a lot of wine in one sitting and have bottles that have been opened, corks seem to average out to being better for re-sealing the bottle -- specifically if you're placing them horizontally, like in a wine cooler. I've found screw caps frequently tend to leak, even over a single evening. Even with the hole from the corkscrew, the cork tends to reseal better from my experience.
With that said, I am talking about actual cork and not the plastic versions; Those will seep just as bad as screw caps.
If I was storing opened bottles for longer than a day or two, I'd probably make heavier use of the vacuum stoppers, but I'm in that midpoint of the spectrum where I neither need the fancy tools, but still need something more than the cheap solution.
Vinophiles are now considered 'hipsters'? Is there any less hipster crowd than uber-wealthy wine collectors, a hobby dating back generations, if not centuries?
For example if one cannot be bothered to use, or does not have a corkscrew handy, a screw cap might be preferred for some.
I know it is difficult for most Modern Americans to use a corkscrew. Even more difficult is being able to appreciate the complexities and effort that goes into making good, traditional wine. Best to do away with tradition for the sake of convenience.
PFAS are a specific family of chemicals unsuitable for this application.
No significant amount of microplastics is likely to develop from the mild abrasion of opening and closing a wine bottle a handful of times. And if your risk tolerance is so low that you are worried about that largely theoretical concern, you probably should not be drinking wine at all (because we have quite concrete evidence that alcohol is unhealthy -- unlike microplastics).
I would be (much) more worried about chunks of plastic getting in my wine from those fake cork products than from screw tops.
I think research has shown that simply storing acidic foods in contact with plastic causes micro plastics to release: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37343248/
This isn't a huge deal, because a separate tool made specifically for resealing wine bottles is better than either. But if you don't drink a whole bottle of wine at once, and you don't have such a tool, cork reseals better.
I remember the time when the press cried "there is no cork left on earth!!".
I remember the time when cheap wine came with plastic corks.
I remember the time when cheap wine had cork corks again.
(Honestly, HFCS prob has wreaked legit havoc via the "death by 1000 papercuts" method.)
If it's users with similar upvote/downvote patterns as you = higher weight, then it's more effective.
Over four decades, environmentalists have simply won the discussion. 99% of paper products made in the US are made using farmed wood. Now paper is renewable enough that I don't worry about putting it in the trash (since I know we have an incinerator).
Still uses petrochemicals for harvesting and processing, there's definitely a risk that certain kinds of tree farms are counterproductive. I don't think that's ever really broadly been the case though, it sounds like a whitepaper released by a thinktank funded by a plastic company to me. Those often get repackaged into low effort local news, it's not surprising that people get so confused.
Straws I guess get wrapped up in that, though I'd sooner just not use a straw and don't see why that's not the default. Seems strange to me that adult humans want a goofy plastic tube in order to make drinking liquid enjoyable enough.
To me the bigger issues are single use plastic cups and bottles, to which I say elimination and alternatives like water bottles and aluminum cans, paper cups, aluminum cups (did you know you can buy aluminum solo cups?), and glassware can really meet almost every need. It's a matter of volume and pollution versus real net utility versus the technology they replace.
There's some advanced plastics and things for packaging that are cool, but they don't need to be on every single thing.
Hopefully this isn’t some kind of Mandela effect. I don’t think it is.
Cork has a little overlap with a few plastic use-cases, but only slightly. It requires far more effort to produce than a plastic equivalent, and is simply not suited to most use cases.
I do look forward to some cork alternatives to plastic where it makes sense. But I hardly expect it to make any meaningful difference to overall plastic use.
Plastics are ESSENTIAL for everything from medical devices, electrical insulation, to pipes. There are simply no alternatives. We are not going to replace PE or PVC jacketing for wires with cork.
Of course, cork isn’t the solution to all plastic use cases, just a potential replacement in some use cases. Like phasing out combustion vehicles, you have to signal that you’re forcing the sunset of the material so alternatives are identified and supply chains can reconfigure accordingly.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2023/12/1...
In the case of asbestos the harm was much greater and the substitutes much better and more readily available and the use range of the original material was much narrower.
The blind, ignorant hate for "plastics" online just goes to show how people can be led to believe anything.
For example polyethylene, used in milk jugs and water pipes is absolutely harmless. You could swallow a fist full of PE pellets per day and they would simply pass right through you unchanged. This is a scientific fact. If a PE container can hold concentrated sulfuric acid your stomach is going to do nothing to it. Yet for some reason drinking out of a plastic milk jug is bad because some random person online said so.
We did it for leaded gasoline.
What about hemp?
It is really bizarre to me how people online have jumped in the plastic hate bandwagon with zero understanding of how industrial processes that make the modern world possible actually work.
Why not replace the dirty rubber in tires with wooden wheels?
Just one tip:
It’s not the worst thing to assume good faith when somebody asks a follow up question. Especially here.
You might even assume that the person asking might not know your pet peeve trigger subject too well.
There’s even a chance they were genuinely curious to understand your point of view — until, through a rude rant-reply, they realised they were speaking to a tormented Twitter chatbot and dropped the subject instead.
And yet: Funkopops.
And yet: the biggest source of plastic pollution on the planet is apparently the Coca Cola corporation.
Yeah, keep plastic for where it's essential, but banning or regulating plastic use is essential to the our, and the biosphere's, long term survival.
Vinyl flooring exists because linoleum was superseded but it stands as an example of a niche where cork did function. I know why people wanted to stop using linoleum, it doesn't mean it doesn't "work"
? I'd like a clear and obvious reference.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
"There is plastic in the environment"
It does not say "plastic harms this or that".
The equality "plastic presence"=="plastic harm" is not obvious to me
To me it is just like "man-made electromagnetic waves are everywhere, they are not natural, ergo this harms the environment"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_pollution#Effects
It's fairly well sourced. Some examples of harm from plastics, mostly on the environment:
> Degradation (changes in the ecosystem state) and modifications of marine systems are associated with loss of ecosystem services and values.
> in 2019, production and incineration of plastic will contribute greenhouse gases in the equivalent of 850 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) to the atmosphere
> For example, in Bangkok flood risk increases substantially because of plastic waste clogging the already overburdened sewer system.
> Marine wildlife such as seabirds, whales, fish and turtles mistake plastic waste for prey; most then die of starvation as their stomachs become filled with plastic. They also suffer from lacerations, infections, reduced ability to swim, and internal injuries.
> When analyzing the effect of polyethylene microbeads (origin: cosmetic exfoliants) on the aquatic macrophyte L. minor, no effect on photosynthetic pigments & productivity was found, but root growth and root cell viability decreased.
But this one's about humans:
> By affecting the thyroid hormone axis, BPA exposure can lead to hypothyroidism.
>“Compared with materials like polyurethane foam [used for thermal insulation], products made with cork require less energy and produce less CO2 emissions.”
Polyurethane foam is used for thermal insulation in a few places. But fiberglass is still the champion of that sector, and it's older than plastic and more durable and abundant than cork. More often, polyurethane is used for couch cushions, cheap mattresses, and shoes, which are difficult use-cases for cork — Birkenstocks have a cult following but poor water resistance.
>used to shield fuel tanks on NASA spacecraft and electric car batteries.
And this about wraps it up.
There are probably some good use cases for cork, but the major advantage of plastic is the ability to do so much with so little. An LDPE bag of the sort now banned in California weighs about six grams. I can't think of many things you could do with six grams of cork that don't involve grapes.
For example, Washington State's energy code now requires continuous exterior insulation. Putting a continuous layer of rigid insulation on the outside of the building reduces heat loss due to thermal bridging (conduction through the studs).
The most common material for this purpose, in the US anyway, is foam (polystyrene or polyisocyanurate). Other options are mineral wool, fiberboard, and cork. Mineral wool and fiberboard are pretty expensive compared to foam and I imagine that cork would be similar or even more expensive. But a cool thing about cork is that it can double as both insulation and cladding. I don't know if that makes it an economical choice, but someone's marketing cork for this purpose right here in Washington [1].
[1] https://www.smallplanetsupply.com/thermacork
Edit: fixed a typo
What would it take to "unfold" something like a tree into a continously harvest able square with leaves and hydroponic roots still attached?
The harvest is tough work but it's the only well-paid trade left in agriculture. I doubt it has much future beyond fodder for high peasant magazine articles. Trees are dying left and right from multiple climate-related problems no one has a handle on. Divestment from the traditional montado like mine into intensive production units with better water management and automated extraction is the likely future. The billion-dollar outfits have started experiments with high-density groves, inspired by the olive oil industry's success. It's a finicky tree though, so conclusive results are taking a few decades more than you'd expect to materialise. They're stuck having to buy cork from thousands of traditionalist family farms for now.
But that's assuming the industry even grows enough to justify the investment into better plantations. Legitimate uses for the stuff apart from wine corks are scarce. We're all hoping that our phenomenal ecological footprint will see us grow as an industry into everything from insulation and roofing to shopping bags and umbrellas (hence said puff piece I imagine). We'll see, it really is a phenomenal material and the carbon math makes sense at the source. You can almost see the tree sucking out stuff from the air and soil to build thicker layers of bark. I joke that we've been doing regenerative farming for generations, we just didn't know it until someone told us.
If anyone on HN is ever in Portugal and wants to visit a montado, happy to take y'all on the most boring tour of your life. But we can have a nice picnic! It's lovely country.
What about cork flooring?
The newer multi-layer flooring is indistinguishable from plastic flooring. No point to it.
(Worst stuff being any mid-twentieth-century alternative containing literal asbestos)
I know another founder based in Lisbon so look out, if I'm ever there!
Indeed it is a lovely country!
I just watched this to try and get a better idea. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YnnbuoeQFSI
Would it be correct to say the cork is a protective layer over the part of the tree that does that nutrient transport, and most trees don’t allow for this kind of separation? Or maybe the average person just isn’t knowledgeable and skilled enough to make the distinction when removing bark?
On a side note, I’m happy to see cork is harvested sustainably and Portugal has such long standing laws in place to protect it. Many years ago I heard wines were moving away from cork because the world was going to run out, and it seemed like plastic and synthetic cork was becoming more popular in cheaper wine. Lately I’ve been seeing cork more often, so either we were lied to years ago, or something changed. Either way, I’m happy to see the change. I’ve always thought cork was a pretty cool material.
It's also worth it to say that young trees need to be de-corked once (when they're around 20 years old) before they'll produce useable cork. It grows much smoother after this first peel, which looks a lot more like normal bark (just much thicker).
The world is swinging back to natural materials, for better or worse. I'm biased of course but in this case I'm a fan purely because the physical properties are so good and there's so much space to make it more economical to consumers.
I had a bottle of wine a few months ago with a really bad cork. It did seem more like bark. I guess I can assume that came from a younger tree, borderline too young maybe.
https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/global-p...
Gotta start somewhere I guess.
[1] https://www.corkstore24.co.uk/shop/11-thermal-and-sound-insu... is the sort of thing I guess he was talking about
[2] https://ukgbc.org/resources/mycelium-insulation/ website seems to lean into the idea that this is basically mushrooms which seems a bit weird but whatever
Also, it sounds like the CO2 extraction is increased in order to regrow the bark.
https://corkhouse.com/blogs/blog/the-cork-bark-lifecycle