Cork Plantation Flooring
From Floor Coverings
Contents |
History of Cork Flooring.
Some people may not realize exactly what a cork tree looks like, or even that cork comes from a tree. This extremely useful product is used in a multitude of ways, such as for an unusual and comfortable flooring, corks for wine bottles, and cork sheets for use in bulletin boards, shoe soles and insulation, and other things. Since cork is a natural product it can vary in patterns and colors and no two tiles made from it will be identical. Cork is infinitely renewable and eco-friendly.
Where is cork flooring harvested?
After almost a hundred years, 10,000 trees in Australia's capital, Canberra, are starting to be harvested. This is a large cork plantation. Cork trees can live up to five hundred years. After at least forty years, cork is viable for commercial harvesting. It can be taken every nine years. Most cork plantations remain in families so generation after generation can care for and harvest the cork trees. Cork plantations are found in both hemispheres and vary in size from a few trees, to thousands. Cork is stripped from the trees using axes, then piled high before being taken in to the factories for processing.
Cork in wine bottles.
Corks in wine bottles have been used since the 18th century. Portugal produces a lot of cork products, with wine stoppers being the majority of their production. Cork trees are a species of oak. Farmers are finding that trees such as eucalyptus, quick growing and harvested more frequently, can generate much more income. Unfortunately for farmers, eucalyptus trees burn more quickly than cork trees and in a plantation of cork trees, the protective thick bark enables a lot more of these trees to survive a fire. Cork plantations help soil conservation and can therefore also help protect land from the ravages of forest fires. Many farmers are abandoning their cork plantations and so the land becomes more susceptible to fires.
Cork flooring and Portugals economy.
As a firebreak, cork plantations are now being planted in eucalyptus groves, thereby serving a dual purpose -- protecting other species of trees as well as providing a renewable resource. Once eucalyptus trees are harvested they need to be replanted -- cork can be taken again and again from a tree and it will grow back. Cork plantations are so important to Portugal's economy that these pilot projects are being closely studied by other countries as well. Cork trees are gnarly looking and often twisted, and they can look ancient. They are a big renewable resource to many countries' populations and a livelihood for thousands of families the world over. Without the useful cork from one species of oak tree, we would have to live without a lot of the products we use today. Fine wines wouldn't taste the same if they were sealed with a metal twist off cap. And they wouldn't look as good, either.
