Sustainably Sourced

Cork Oak

Growing to heights of 65 feet (20 meters), the majestic Cork Oak is a unique and valuable tree species. Like many other oak trees, the Cork Oak is an evergreen and does not drop its leaves in fall. The thick and knobbly dark grey bark which covers it is the portion known as “cork.”

During cork harvest, the tree remains protected and standing while large sections of its outer bark—the cork itself—are scored and peeled from the tree. The Cork Oak is unique in its ability to regenerate its outer bark. The tree will not be harvested until it reaches 25 years of age! Once it reaches maturity, it can be stripped of its cork once every 9 to 12 years without causing damage to the tree. A single Cork Oak, which lives up to 200 years, can be safely harvested over 16 times in it’s life.

Cork oak is found through southwestern Europe and into northwestern Africa, in places such as Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia. Portugal is home to the largest collection of Cork Oak trees and has the highest standards in tree preservation. Cork oaks are found in forest mosaics alongside other tree species, including a variety of other oaks, Stone and Maritime pines, and even wild Olive trees. These lands are home to a great diversity of species. Plant diversity is higher here than in many other forest regions of the world, with almost 135 different plant species per square kilometer. The diversity extends to animal life, including some critically endangered species such as the Iberian lynx, Barbary deer and Iberian imperial eagle.

Environmental benefits of cork

Cork is not only an extremely versatile and useful material: its environmental value is very high.

Cork is 100% biodegradable, recyclable and renewable.
The extraction of the bark is done manually by professionals who carefully remove it from the tree through an ancient process performed in six stages.
This process, however, does not destroy trees or forests, since the oak tree has a self-regeneration ability, not often seen in all species.

This is, in fact, one of those cases where human intervention is beneficial to the environment. By removing the Cork oak’s bark, the absorption of carbon dioxide is stimulated – the more the tree is harvested, the more CO₂ it absorbs. It is estimated that all the Cork Oak tree forests in the world are responsible for absorbing around 10 million tons of CO₂ annually!