Napa, CA — Having collected nearly 4 million corks from restaurants, wineries and grocery stores across the U.S., ReCORK America has found a new life, other than remanufacturing, for the waste items.

Canadian footwear company SOLE has developed a cork blend that it says enhances the properties of its sandals, footbeds and other footwear products, and will receive donated corks from ReCORK in exchange for marketing the cork-collecting campaign.

Sponsored by cork producer Amorim of Portugal, ReCORK was launched in 2007 and collected 500,000 corks in its first year. The program receives used wine corks from wineries, restaurants, resorts, Whole Foods Market stores in Northern California and American Airlines. Some partners give over corks from their own operations and others also collect corks from the public.

ReCORK and SOLE worked together for about eight months leading up to the final decision to partner up. In that time SOLE was able to get its hand on thousands of corks and research how they could use the cork in their products.

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