Could Cork Save the Beauty Industry's Carbon Footprint?

by Martha Vainer March 2, 2021

February 27, 2021

By Euny Wong;

When you think of a cork, if you do, you probably think of wine stoppers, or maybe dartboards. But cork jars and compacts? Those are new. They don't exactly glisten in a shelfie, but some sustainability experts are banking on cork to help shrink the beauty industry's carbon footprint — a Herculean task considering that, in 2018, almost 7.9 billion units of rigid plastic were created for beauty and personal-care products in the U.S.

Cork offers a renewable way forward: It is natural and biodegradable (it gets broken down by insects over several years). Cork is harvested from the cork oak tree (quercus suber) found in the western Mediterranean and along the Atlantic coast, in seven countries (including Morocco, Portugal, Spain, and France). And cork can be cut from a layer of bark without harming trees. Much as a shorn sheep regrows wool, cork regenerates — though a lot slower (a 25-year-old cork oak tree can be responsibly stripped of its cork once every nine to 12 years).

The cork cell is about 90 percent air, making it light and insulating to the point of being virtually nonporous, which is why cork seals wine in bottles — and why it's capable of packaging serums without sucking up precious product or letting it leak.

But the most persuasive argument for cork packaging may be this: "Harvesting cork 'forces' the tree to remanufacture its bark, and therefore to use photosynthesis and carbon dioxide from the air, [which] helps to mitigate greenhouse gases and fight climate change," says Renaud Piazzetta, a forest engineer and director of the nonprofit research group Mediterranean Cork Institute.

On average, cork trees can live between 150 and 200 years, but some may be several centuries old. Miraculously, "cork trees are not highly combustible. The cork bark protects [other] parts of the tree, enabling them to sequester carbon dioxide even when wildfires decimate a forest," says Piazzetta.

Cork can be upcycled. Munich-based Corpack manufactures cosmetics containers using a blend that includes cork powder leftover from wine cork production.

Corpack is developing new blends of cork and other biodegradable materials. "More and more brands are approaching us about cork and cork-blend packaging," says Corpack CEO Jean-Paul Corbeil, who is working with brands like Kneipp. "We're just at the very beginning."