Warren Porter
Canada
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Bag-a-Cork Program Engages a Community
A few years back, before I participated in Landmark’s Self-Expression and
Leadership Program (SELP) program, I was looking for a way to become known in
the wine industry here in Ontario, Canada. As a newcomer in the industry, I was
focused on building a successful business and being recognized in the industry.
I credit the SELP program for giving me the perfect templates I needed to
forward both my objectives and wanted to take these lessons out of the sandbox
and into the real world.
While growing my business, I became inspired by a recycling program in Australia
and founded a similar initiative in Ontario called Bag-a-Cork. The program
manifests a very simple idea: the collection of discarded wine bottle corks and
selling them to manufacturers, at a profit, thereby making money and preventing
tons of cork (literally) from ending up in landfills. We approached Girl Guides
of Canada, an organization that mentors young girls and women about citizenship
and leadership development (much like the Girl Scouts in the U.S.) for their
participation and quickly enrolled them into the concept.
Iron Gate Cellarage (my company) provides recycling bins to businesses, such as
restaurants, bars, and liquor stores. Also, small bags are distributed to
consumers for at-home collection. The general public commits to saving discarded
corks and bringing them to specific collection locations. From there they are
put on trucks and carried to a company who turn what would have been landfill
into things like cork floor tiles, upholstery — even fishing poles.
This Bag-a-Cork venture took off. . Today, Girl Guides collect bins of cork in
about 200 locations throughout the area, not only helping out our company, but
learning about a community-oriented business, and seeing first-hand the many
reasons recycling makes sense. In 2006 we collected over 6 tons of cork from th
Toronto area alone.
Both my business and this non-profit initiative continue to grow. A large
corporation recently agreed to help haul cork from what will soon be five
hundred locations throughout Ontario. This year we will divert around fifteen
tons of cork from entering landfills. The program has become so widespread, I’m
known throughout the wine community as “the cork guy!” What pleases me most
about Bag-a-Cork is how it involves
young people — our future leaders — in thinking about new ways that business,
community, and environmental issues can be solved creatively and jointly. We’ve
established a grant for the Girl Guides, challenging them to take what they’ve
learned in the Bag-a-Cork program and invent their own recycling programs and
businesses. There’s even a Girl Guide badge with a cork on it! By inspiring
others in the same way that the Landmark program inspired me, I’m happy to be
able to share some of the knowledge that changed the way I work and live.
See more articles about
Grads Breakthrough Stories.