Captain Cork

Ahoi, Captain Cork!

A soft, vegan and envi­ron­men­tal­ly fri­end­ly alter­na­ti­ve to lea­ther, tha­t’s what you’ll find at Cap­tain Cork!

Captain Cork?

Ina De Quint star­ted her brand in 2018 as a tri­bu­te to her decea­sed father. The envi­ron­men­tal­ly con­scious man taught his child­ren how to recy­cle, reu­se and con­su­me slow­ly and also had a few pro­jects of his own. He bought a house in Por­tu­gal, which he wan­ted to con­vert into a ful­ly self-suf­fi­ci­ent, eco­lo­gi­cal home when he reti­red. Ina regu­lar­ly went to Por­tu­gal to take care of the admi­nis­tra­ti­on and accoun­ting of the pro­ject. Tog­e­ther they were impres­sed by the eco­lo­gi­cal mira­cle cork that is being pro­ces­sed in that regi­on. Unfort­u­na­te­ly Ina’s dad­dy, the Cap­tain, died at the age of 59 of eso­pha­ge­al can­cer and he never mana­ged to rea­li­ze his Por­tu­gue­se dream. Ina deci­ded to say good­bye to her care­er in the busi­ness and let the dream live on with Cap­tain Cork: hand­bags, hats, jewel­lery, shoes and even baby toys in cork!

Cork is good for the planet

“The cork indus­try in Por­tu­gal ori­gi­nal­ly lived from making cork stop­pers for the wine and cava indus­try and this sin­ce Dom Peri­gnon bot­t­led his cham­pa­gne with cork in the 17^th cen­tu­ry. A few years ago, the wine indus­try swit­ched to syn­the­tic wine stop­pers. The cork manu­fac­tu­r­ers were obli­ged to find a new mar­ket and they found it in the life­style sec­tor.” Ina says. 

The cork tree actual­ly brings many advan­ta­ges for the envi­ron­ment. For exam­p­le, a pee­led cork tree con­verts 3 to 5 times more CO2 into oxy­gen, thus absor­bing ener­gy to rege­ne­ra­te its bark. Tha­t’s why the plan­ta­ti­ons are often seen by bio­lo­gists as the Ama­zon rain­fo­rest of Euro­pe. The cork trees are pee­led every 8 to 10 years. The bark is then bent and has to be remo­ved. By remo­ving its bark, the tree can pro­du­ce more bark and the­r­e­fo­re more oxy­gen. Cork is also a rene­wa­ble mate­ri­al. The trees do not need to be chop­ped down and the­r­e­fo­re do not need to be plan­ted over and over again.

In order to arri­ve at an end pro­duct, the cork indus­try in Por­tu­gal tri­es to be as eco­lo­gi­cal as pos­si­ble. Cork is pee­led and dried and cut into small pie­ces. The thin strips of bark are ​‘tan­ned’ by water pro­ces­ses into a soft, fle­xi­ble and smooth mate­ri­al. No che­mi­cals or toxins are used. Cork is purely natu­ral and com­ple­te­ly vegan.

Good place to work

All pro­duc­tion of Cap­tain Cork takes place in Por­tu­gal. In order to manu­fac­tu­re cork, you need to be very pre­cise. The indus­try calls in pro­fes­sio­nals for this.
They are among the hig­hest paid workers in Euro­pe. Be careful, becau­se not all cork in the world is equal­ly sus­tainable. Asi­an cork or Euro­pean cork that is pro­ces­sed in Asia is much less eco­lo­gi­cal­ly sound. The cork is often of poor qua­li­ty and poor­ly tan­ned. For exam­p­le, the che­mi­cal glue used by the cork fac­to­ries the­re con­ta­ins ani­mal com­pon­ents, dan­ge­rous che­mi­cals are released during the pro­duc­tion pro­cess and the trans­port ensu­res a lar­ger eco­lo­gi­cal foot­print.
Be careful whe­re you buy your cork access­ories. In Bel­gi­um, the best place to buy them is at Cap­tain Cork!

Short/​overall

Would you rather keep it envi­ron­men­tal­ly fri­end­ly and vegan in your life?
Spoil yours­elf with an acces­so­ry from Cap­tain Cork.