A researcher at the National Engineering and Industrial Technology Institute of Portugal (INETI) has calculated that by drinking two glasses of wine (250 ml wine) daily – poured from a 750 ml bottle of wine – a consumer purchases 122 natural cork stoppers a year, thus retaining 1,183.40 grams of carbon dioxide – the equivalent to a vehicle travelling a distance of seven kilometers.

Covering a worldwide area of over 2.2 million hectares, in countries such as Portugal, Spain, Algeria, Morocco, Italy, Tunisia and France the cork forests act as a global carbon storehouse, with obvious consequences in terms of climate regulation.

APCOR states that the Portuguese cork forests alone, at 736 thousand hectares, drained 4.8 million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere in the past year, according to a recent study carried out by the School of Agronomy (ISA) in Lisbon. It follows that the Mediterranean cork forests provide a carbon sink of over 14 million tons annually.

Cairn Environment recently communicated its findings on the environmental impact of different closures, commissioned by French closure manufacturer Oeneo Bouchage. The report stated that a natural cork closure releases four times less carbon into the atmosphere than a screwcap. Screwcaps' carbon footprint was determined at 10 633kg CO²/tonne and natural cork’s at 2 490kg CO²/tonne.