Earth Day, the Ilegal Way
Team Ilegal launches a new sustainability effort to upcycle cork, while raising money for our local community garden in Brooklyn.
From Ilegal Mezcal Volume 6 / The Sustainability Issue / Spring 2023.
By E.R. Pulgar
This Earth Day, Ilegal Mezcal hosted more than 80 folks (and lots of dogs) at our headquarters in Greenpoint, Brooklyn to celebrate the planet. To kick the spring off right, we partnered with several local organizations: by the end of the day, Yaro Studio had led a wildflower seed bombing of the neighborhood, Julie from Fear Less Grrl conducted a self-defense demonstration, we raffled self-watering pots from Greenery Unlimited and Ilegal picnic packs full of merch, and we had raised $950 for Java Street Community Garden.
For us, the highlight of the day was the launch of our new cork recycling program at HQ. The initiative opens our space as a drop-off location to receive used cork from our neighbors every weekend. Ilegal HQ invites locals to drop off cork from spirit and wine? bottles, bulletin boards, wall tiles, and more. Collected cork is then shipped to a processing facility via a carbon-neutral shipping program where it is repurposed into shoe soles for the shoe company SOLE. Eventually, we want to be able to send shoes to our palenque workers in Oaxaca, make upcycled cork turntable covers for our music program and available on our online store, and expand the program from our headquarters into other community gardens in the city and eventually into a national effort with our partners across the U.S.
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Ilegal is no stranger to the benefits of cork, both for the environment and for storing our mezcals. We use Portuguese cork to cap all of our bottles, which allows the mezcal to breathe and age better. Cork naturally absorbs CO2, a greenhouse gas that causes global climate change. Helping cork trees grow means investing in a more carbon-neutral future: since cork trees need to absorb more CO2 to grow bark, harvesting it boosts carbon consumption by up to five times.
For each ton of cork harvested, a cork forest absorbs an average of 55 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. Therefore, 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. We are proud of the fact that by treating our carefully-made mezcal with all the respect it deserves, we are helping care for the earth where it is grown.?
As the sun set on April 22nd, we had raised necessary funds to put towards Java Street’s community beds for repairs, soil, and landscaping fabric so Greenpoint residents could pick herbs for years to come — because Earth Day is every day. We are committed to respecting and protecting our planet within our local communities and within our greater organization around the world, from the Portuguese forests where our cork grows to Oaxaca where our mezcal is slow-roasted before you taste it. No Earth, no mezcal.