The humble spekboom shrub (we blogged about it here)or elephant's food has made a re-appearance. This time as part of Columbit Corks SA initiative to reduce their clients’ carbon footprint by giving the plant to wineries and producers who buy cork closures from them.

I admit that when I first read about this bundling of cork closures and the environment, I was a little sceptical. Weren’t we trying to phase out cork closures? Just how environmentally friendly are they, really?

But it appears that my scepticism is redundant. A recent study of the environmental impact of cork, plastic and aluminium screwcap stoppers has found what is already widely accepted: cork is the most environmentally-friendly stopper. [decanter.com] Cork is renewable, recyclable and biodegradable.

The report, undertaken by PricewaterhouseCoopers, found plastic stoppers, including the plastic capsule that goes over the top of the bottle, are nine times more damaging to the environment - and aluminium screwcaps are twenty-two times - than cork stoppers, including corks with a plastic capsule.

But I digress.

Columbit, who supplies packaging and processing to the wine, food and beverage industries in SA, has recently joined the UN Global Compact, a non-profit agency set up to guarantee sustainable growth and good corporate citizenship.

One of the ten principles the compact addresses is environmental responsibility. To tackle this Columbit has set up a spekboom nursery in the Wellington winelands.

By giving their clients a spekboom to decorate their tasting rooms, Columbit hope to promote awareness of the spekboom’s ability to absorb enormous amounts of carbon and why this is so important for the environment.

A further feather in Columbit’s cap in this regard, is their partnership with the Department of Water Affairs and Forestry: Working for Water Programme and R3G, to enable additional funding to plant more trees. The long term benefits will be greater carbon absorption and the creation of jobs in caring for the trees.