Let’s talk about cork

Lord Puttnam, environmentalist, film producer and chancellor of the Open University, tells Gabriel Savage about his involvement with Apcor’s cork campaign

WHAT DOES the film Chariots of Fire have in common with the Iberian cork industry? The guiding touch of film producer and conservationist Lord Puttnam of Queensgate CBE, who has added his energetic influence to Apcor’s I Love Natural Cork campaign. Indeed, Puttnam draws a parallel between his current conservation work and former high-profile film career by highlighting his desire to raise awareness of a culture that’s being eroded.

His involvement with the cork industry began 18 months ago, when he was approached to see if he might be able to channel some of his influence and energy towards the campaign launched last year by the Portuguese Cork Association.

Cork may be a relatively recent addition to Puttnam’s exhaustive list of causes, but, he maintains, “I’ve been an environmentalist for most of my life”, taking up his first formal role in this sphere in 1980 as president of the Council for the Protection of Rural England.

With his main home now, rather appropriately from the perspective of his latest cause, in the Irish county of Cork, Puttnam explains how he was particularly attracted to Apcor’s campaign by similarities he detected with issues facing his own local community.

“I’m really interested in sustainable communities, less so industrial Europe, but rural Ireland, Spain and Portugal,” he outlines. Describing his corner of Ireland as “probably the most organic place in Europe”, Puttnam explains: “We’re trying to work out how West Cork as a community will deal with the next 20-30 years. How do we get young people back on the land? The cork industry precisely parallels this.”

Although still getting to grips with the specific issues and concerns facing the cork producers, Puttnam paints a picture of “a once dominant industry that became complacent and woke up to find its future generally in crisis”. Nevertheless, he finds reassurance that the motivation is there to slow or even reverse this decline, pointing to the 150,000 hectares of new forest in the process of being planted.

As a wine lover himself, Puttnam is convinced not only by cork’s role in sustaining communities, but also by its “best of breed” status. He maintains: “No one has a product that can do as good a job as cork does. It’s made up of 800 million cells – that’s truly a natural chemical function that cannot be replicated.” Moreover, Puttnam’s involvement with his local Irish community has made him fully aware of the urgency in reversing this decline. “If we were daft enough to let the cork forest die, it would only be a question of time before someone said ‘Oh my God, what’s happened to cork?’,” he argues. Whether considering the agricultural skills of rural Ireland or Portugal, he stresses: “There’s an innate knowledge in those communities you can’t replicate; what’s done is done.”

Discussions about the nature and extent of Puttnam’s involvement remain at an early stage, but he believes his educational hat – he is currently chancellor of the Open University – may be the most effective route forward. “We need to be making sure that cork as a product and material is understood in schools,” he maintains. “If you can get kids to take products like cork seriously, they have remarkable power.”

As a key part of this effort, Puttnam hopes to help inspire teachers, emphasising that this achievement would represent “a home run”. He also believes in arming children with hard facts rather than woolly conservationism, saying: “Each cork takes 118g of carbon from the atmosphere – a child really processes that.”

While cork’s use is by no means restricted to the wine industry, this sector does account for a considerable 70% of its value and, as Puttnam points out, “most people’s physical relationship with cork tends to be through wine”. Nevertheless, he warns of the dangers attached to relying too heavily on this customer base, pointing out that “any business that doesn’t look at the diversification of its product is barmy”. For the moment, however, Puttnam is convinced that “in the short term the battle of the bottle is where the action needs to happen”.