Grist points us to a Missouri recycler who is accepting wine corks! Yemm & Hart Green Materials is collecting corks for its prototype cork recycling program — and if the experiment proves successful — it will add wine cork recycling to its regular business. That’s great news for waste reduction in my foodie-home and it is good news for the venerable and precious Cork-Oak Montados of Portugal.

Y&H needs 1200 lbs. of corks for their prototype program — that’s about 160,000 wine corks or 60,000 champagne corks. You mail your corks to Y&H; you pay the shipping (corks are light!) and you get the karma bump! Learn more about the wine cork recycling program here.

Plus: screw the alternatives. Eschew the screw and plastic topped vino. From the Y&H website:

Did you know that the [harvests of] Cork Montados, the cork oak savannahs, are the continuation of an ancient practice and multi-dimensional use of land around the Mediterranean Sea? The Cork Montados actually protect the biodiversity and certain wildlife that is endangered or on the brink of extinction and are a hedge against desertification caused by global warming as the Sahara creeps into Europe. Together, we can make cork recycling part of the cause to save the Cork Montados. It is important that people not only recycle their corks but make sure that they are not synthetic to begin with. Real cork is sustainable, synthetic and screw caps are not. You can help the Cork Montados … by the choice you make for your wine.

Learn more about the sustainable and ancient harvesting of cork and the Cork Mantados in Audubon Magazine and at the Rainforest Alliance.

More of a re-user? Shredded biodegradable corks make good mulch. Strung together, corks make good trivets.