Penny tiles are a popular look for interior flooring. While ceramic and glass are often used to make tiles, these beautiful penny tiles, which we noticed on 3rings blog, are actually cut from recycled wine corks. Designed by Jelinek Cork, the recycled tiles take advantage of cork's natural resiliency and water resistance to create a stylish low-impact flooring material. The Jelinek Cork Group of companies supply upwards of 100 million cork stoppers each year. All of these corks are pulled from bottles and then discarded. That is a lot of cork. In keeping with the company's concern for the environment and appreciating the limited annual availability of cork raw material from which wine corks are produced, in 2005 Jelinek Cork Group became a major player in North America's first natural wine cork recycling initiative. Jelinek Cork Group uses these recycled wine corks as the raw material for the production of some of their cork flooring, creating unique and unusual patterns and designs. Used wine corks are being collected for recycling by CorkReHarvest which has located drop boxes in many Whole Foods stores across the US and Canada. Recycled cork obviously cannot be reused in wine bottles, but the cork penny tiles are one of a number of reuse applications for used corks. Additionally recycled wine corks are used by consumers for a wide variety of interesting and imaginative projects.

• Arts and Crafts
• Wreaths & Decorations
• Bulletin Boards and Memo Boards
• Decorative Uses
• Plugs & Stoppers
• Key Chain Holders

Source: http://www.jelinek.com/closures-stoppers/recycled-wine-corks/