Speaker announcement: Your screw cap wine bottles aren’t saving the world

Patrick Spencer says he has had two epipha­nies in his life.

One was when he met his wife, Lib­by. Anoth­er was when he walked into the cork for­est of Por­tu­gal.

At the time, Patrick was the sus­tain­abil­i­ty coor­di­na­tor with Willamette Val­ley Vine­yards in Turn­er. He was invit­ed by one of the win­ery’s cork sup­pli­ers to see close up how cork is har­vest­ed for wine bot­tle clo­sures.

“It was an ah-ha moment for me,” Patrick said.

At TEDxSalem, Patrick will take us to that moment of illu­mi­na­tion.

Sus­tain­abil­i­ty and oneophil­ia are two of many things that make Ore­gon spe­cial, and often we and the rest of the coun­try have com­bined the two pas­sions.

At some point, that has led to an avoid­ance of corked bot­tles and a pop­u­lar­iza­tion of plas­tic clo­sures and alu­minum screw caps.

Well, what if there isn’t a short­age of cork? What if cork forests are strong and thriv­ing? What if I told you that those who are in the cork indus­try are prob­a­bly the great­est stew­ards of this nat­ur­al resource?

Today, Patrick is the exec­u­tive direc­tor of Cork For­est Con­ser­va­tion Alliance, a Salem-based glob­al non­prof­it that works to edu­cate on and pro­tect the cork forests of Europe and North Africa.

The 5‑year-old orga­ni­za­tion runs the largest cork recy­cling pro­gram in the U.S. and it was recent­ly award­ed spe­cial con­sul­ta­tive sta­tus to the Eco­nom­ic and Social Coun­cil of the Unit­ed Nations.

So why is a Salem-based man advo­cat­ing for cork forests and their stew­ards thou­sands of miles away from home?

“What we do local­ly real­ly affects the world glob­al­ly,” Patrick says.