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Speaker 1: Welcome to Brain staff from dot com where smart Happens.

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Speaker 1: Hi Am Marshall Brain with today's question where does cork

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Speaker 1: come from? Just about every tree has an outer layer

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Speaker 1: of cork bark, but the cork oak is the primary

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Speaker 1: source of most cork products in the world, including wine

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Speaker 1: bottle stoppers. These trees growing countries that run along the

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Speaker 1: coast of the Mediterranean Sea, where there's plenty of sunshine,

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Speaker 1: low rainfall, and high humidity. The countries that produced the

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Speaker 1: most cork include Portugal, Algeria, Spain, Morocco, France, Italy and Tunisia.

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Speaker 1: So why does the cork oak have a thicker layer

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Speaker 1: of cork bark than other trees. The tree evolved to

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Speaker 1: protect itself from the harsh conditions of the forest near

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Speaker 1: the Mediterranean. These forests experience frequent droughts, brush fires, and

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Speaker 1: strong temperature or fluctuations. Cork is actually made of water

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Speaker 1: resistant cells that separate the outer bark from the delicate

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Speaker 1: inner bark. It has a unique set of properties not

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Speaker 1: found in any other naturally existing material. It's lightweight, rot resistant,

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Speaker 1: fire resistant, termite resistant, impermeable to gas and liquids, and

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Speaker 1: it's soft and buoyant. It's these properties that make it

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Speaker 1: ideal for wine bottles and tile flooring. Let's take a

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Speaker 1: look at how cork gets stripped from the tree and

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Speaker 1: processed into consumer products. First, you have to strip the bark.

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Speaker 1: The cork oak must be at least twenty five years

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Speaker 1: old before it's bark can be first harvested. It's cork

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Speaker 1: can then be stripped every eight to fourteen years after that,

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Speaker 1: for as long as the tree lives. The cork is

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Speaker 1: stripped off during June, July, and August using a long

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Speaker 1: handled hatchet to cut sections out of the bark. These

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Speaker 1: sections are then pried away from the tree. Workers have

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Speaker 1: to be careful not to damage the inner layer of

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Speaker 1: the bar or otherwise the bark won't grow back. Next

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Speaker 1: is washing the cork. The cork slabs that are cut

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Speaker 1: away from the tree are boiled and the rough outer

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Speaker 1: layer of bark is stripped away. Boiling the cork also

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Speaker 1: softens it, making it easier to work with. Next is punching,

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Speaker 1: in this case punching out the corks for wine bottles.

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Speaker 1: From the slabs of cork, holes are punched out to

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Speaker 1: make the stoppers. These bottle stoppers are then sorted and

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Speaker 1: shipped to various destinations. The stoppers at this time can

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Speaker 1: be printed or branded with names or logos. And then

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Speaker 1: there's the leftover scrap cork. Once you take the bottle

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Speaker 1: stoppers out of a slab of cork, you have these

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Speaker 1: leftover scraps and that could be ground up, molded into

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Speaker 1: large blocks, and baked in ovens to make other cork

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Speaker 1: products such as cork tile flooring and cork message boards.

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Speaker 1: Cork has been used as bottle stoppers for more than

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Speaker 1: four hundred years. It's possibly the best suited material to

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Speaker 1: use as a will stopper because it contains a natural

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Speaker 1: waxy substance. This substance makes cork impermeable the liquids and

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Speaker 1: gases and prevents the cork from rotting. Be sure to

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