OK, time to fess up: You have a drawer full of wine corks. You’re planning to do a creative art project with them but that seems more unlikely with each bottle you open. Wouldn’t it be nice to gain that drawer space back? Hold off, don’t toss: Recycle. Now in addition to bringing your plastic bags back to the grocers and carrying in your reusable bags, you can take your wine corks to Whole Foods.

Where are all these corks going? Whole Foods will ship them to different vendors who will turn them into new consumer products such as cork floor tiles. Don’t try that one at home!

In a recycling program that began as a pilot test in the Oregon markets, the company has expanded its trial and partnered with Cork ReHarvest to let customers at all their stores properly deposit wine corks. With over 13 billion natural corks produced annually, this system will help reduce the demand on cork plantations and help maintain the ecosystem of the Mediterranean forests.

Here are some interesting cork facts (and reasons to recycle) from Cork ReHarvest:

–Cork is a 100% natural, renewable, recyclable, and biodegradable material.

–Trees are not cut down to get cork but rather the bark is stripped by hand every 9-12 years.

–There is enough cork in the cork forests of Portugal and Spain to last more than 100 years.

Thus we have two dilemmas at once: Many bottlers have switched to plastic stoppers which may prove more difficult to recycle and are possibly not biodegradable. (We already know that the plastic stopper does not easily fit back into the bottle for storage). Second, what happens to the art project? Go get paper and draw. In the meantime, head out with your bagful of corks.

Thanks to Whole Foods’s newest partner that process has become easier and sustainable.