Collection campaign: 150 kg of corks for crane protection

150 kg in ten months - that is the proud result of the cork collection campaign by Kommunalservice Jena (KSJ). The eleven large and well-filled removal boxes have now been handed over to the Thuringia Nature Conservation Youth. The corks will be used to support crane conservation.

Cork collection for crane conservation

"Cork is an important natural raw material and far too good to throw away. That's why the KSJ has been accepting bottle corks or other cork material as an official NABU collection point since July 2022," says KSJ plant manager Uwe Feige.

The corks are collected in a separate and appropriately labeled brown garbage can at the recycling center at Löbstedter Straße 56 in Jena and later recycled. They are used to make ecological insulation material for house construction. The proceeds from the sale are donated to the preservation of the Spanish cork oak forests where cranes spend the winter.

In this way, KSJ is helping to ensure that as many of the 1.2 billion bottle corks that are produced in Germany every year can be recycled. They could be used to produce 32,000 cubic meters of ecologically valuable insulating granulate for house construction. So far, however, only a tenth of the corks have been recycled. With the help of the people of Jena, this figure has now risen slightly.

Cork collection still possible

The collection campaign is continuing. The corks can be handed in during the normal opening hours of the recycling center at Löbstedter Straße.