Wine Cork Tiles are the name of a decorative new material that acknowledges is origins. The tiles offer visual stimulation and provoke thought. Perhaps these tiles, will in some small way, cause people to choose their wine sealed with real cork. Using real cork helps to maintain the ecosystem where the cork oak tree grows. Wine Cork Tiles achieve their character by featuring whole post-consumer wine cork stoppers. This material elevates the recycling of cork to a new art form. Unlike most recycled cork products, the whole corks in this material stand out.

In 2003, it was discovered that there were no post-consumer recycled cork floor/wall tiles available in the United States. Drawing on its knowledge of converting recycled polyethylene and rubber into useful, durable building materials, Yemm & Hart began the first post-consumer wine cork recycling operation in January of 2004. A collaboration was offered to the wine drinking environmentalist public - send in corks to be recycled and Yemm & Hart would attempt to develop them into a commercially viable building product and in return compensate contributors with samples, potential credit toward a purchase of the Wine Cork Tile product and most importantly, the satisfaction of being able to recycle their corks. As of November 2009, nearly 9,000 Lbs (4,090 k) of wine corks have been contributed. A program has been developed to maintain a reliable supply of the cork stoppers when market demand outstrips what has traditionally been contributed.

After having collected approximately 1,000 Lbs. (455 k) of cork stoppers, the product development began. It was not an instant success and there were several disappointing setbacks. Eventually, an acceptable first product was achieved that was repeatable in high volumes. In spite of good intentions within the wine drinking environmentalist public, the contributed post-consumer wine cork stoppers contain a wide assortment of non-cork material. This non-cork material ranges from synthetic or plastic wine stoppers, to wood, ceramic, glass, rubber, wax, fibers and metal - even broken off cork screws. Refinement is an essential process for the successful use of post-consumer wine cork stoppers as a thin tile product.

The refined whole corks are mixed together with a completely safe non-toxic polyurethane binder that causes no harm to the environment during its manufacture or use along with granulated post-industrial cork scrap filler left over from the wine cork industry in Portugal. This mixture is poured into a square mold, the whole corks landing at random. When the molding process is complete, the resulting solid block of cork is sliced or split. The splitting blade runs horizontally, cutting through whole corks molded into the block in every conceivable orientation. The result is that the whole corks display, on the face of each tile, unique geometric shapes: rectangles, circles, ellipses and every shape in between.

One of the best things about Wine Cork Tiles are that they offer an aesthetic response to recycling that is recognizable and meaningful and in many ways, environmentally superior to its competitors. Given that most cork items are either thin veneers laminated to other materials or all tiny granules, this material has a future in many as yet untapped applications. Wine Cork Tiles offer design, fabrication and installation advantages. The tiles are thick and easy to handle, they laminate as a veneer easily and conform to curved surfaces well. As a wall covering, they offer the advantages of thermal insulation, sound dampening and provide a ready-to-use tackboard surface. Cork is well known as one of the most high-end, long lived, resilient flooring materials. Wine Cork Tiles are a serious, functional and decorative material made from recycled wine cork stoppers. Specifying and using them minimizes waste. By making a recycled material look and feel desirable, the material takes a step forward, changing the use of recycled materials from a "cause" to a commonly accepted practice.

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