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These corks will be really expensive: over a Euro each.

I'm surprised that with top-quality corks being so valuable, there isn't an incentive to recycle the material. I also wonder if there is a collector's market for vintage corks.

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My impression from the article is that you'd have to grind them up and use them for the 2nd-tier corks at best. The cleaning involved may make the savings unimpressive, and there is the problem of getting the consumer to get the corks back to you. You could probably counter this by focusing on restaurants though.

There's a cork recycling bin at the Green Life (owned by Whole Foods) in my hometown. They don't mention what they use it for, as far as I can tell, but I'd guess they sell it somewhere.

All Whole Foods markets have cork recycling run by Cork ReHarvest in North America and someone else in the UK: http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/blog/whole-story/cork-reharv...

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