Cork Recycling Program

Ilegal Mezcal is proud to announce our cork recycling program, accepting used corks at our Greenpoint Showroom in Brooklyn.

Beginning Earth Day, April 22, 2023, the Ilegal Mezcal Showroom at 38 Greenpoint Ave. in Brooklyn, will be drop-off location accepting used corks to be recycled. These corks will be ground down to create Recycled Cork, which is used to replace plastics and petroleum-based foams in consumer products, which can be collected and recycled again!

Ilegal Mezcal uses Portuguese cork to cap all of our bottles. This is both for the benefit of the product and the environment. Cork allows for the mezcal to breathe and better age inside the bottle, and cork trees naturally absorbs CO2, a greenhouse gas that causes global climate change. And because corks come from the bark of the cork oak tree, harvested by hand without ever cutting down or killing the tree, cork products do not contribute to deforestation.

Cork trees can grow their bark back up to 15 times in their 200+ year lifespan. Harvesting cork boosts the cork trees carbon consumption by up to five times! This is because the tree must absorb more CO2 to grow back its bark. For each ton of cork harvested, the cork forest absorbs an average of 55 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. This means that a single cork represents 55 times its own weight in carbon sequestered. Cork oak trees in Portugal alone help offset 10 million tons of carbon every year.