A long article in the authoritative German daily tells the story, innovations and technologies of Diasen in their relationship with cork and with the protection of fragile ecosystems.
Below is a translation of the article:
Ecological transformation: how cork is set to make life more sustainable
Diego Mingarelli has rediscovered the ancient wonder material for construction. The Italian industrialist’s interest is a stroke of luck for nature and for people.
By Ulrike Sauer, Rome
In a world of irreconcilable conflicts and existential threats, Diego Mingarelli thinks about people’s domestic wellbeing. With his building materials, the Italian entrepreneur aims to make homes more welcoming and healthier.
His goal is to reconcile industry and nature. In particular, Mingarelli wants his company Diasen to help preserve the Mediterranean cork oak forests. The industrialist is mobilising the environmentally damaging construction industry to protect one of the most precious biotopes in the world, which is a biodiversity hotspot in the Mediterranean. Mingarelli has rediscovered cork, the ancient renewable raw material, for the production of ecological building materials.
In Sassoferrato, in the hinterland of Italy’s central Adriatic coast, his company has since 2000 been promoting the use of cork to produce innovative and sustainable building materials. To do so, Diasen processes the waste from wine cork production in Sardinia. The ground cork is turned into organic thermal-insulating and sound-absorbing mortars, screeds and paints that increase the energy efficiency of buildings, protect against damp and mould and provide acoustic insulation.
Mingarelli makes use of one of nature’s miraculous powers: in the bark of cork oaks, millions of cavities are lined up, enclosing enormous volumes of air. The insulating effect of this cellular structure is transferred to the building materials, which can be sprayed without difficulty onto facades, walls and floors. “Cork is a perfect material for the ecological circular economy and a symbol of regeneration,” he explains. This is because no trees are felled to obtain cork bark. Quercus suber is the only tree in the world that is not harmed during the stripping process, as if the oak had been created for it. The bark grows back completely in just ten years.
The remarkable thing is that stripping acts like a turbo. A cork oak whose bark is harvested regularly absorbs three times as much greenhouse gas as an unharvested cork oak. For once, then, industrial exploitation is a stroke of luck for the endangered planet. The 2.3 million hectares of cork oak forests in the western Mediterranean fix 14 million tonnes of CO₂ a year. Portugal’s cork oaks alone lock away almost five per cent of the country’s emissions. “They are the green lungs of our Mediterranean ecosystem,” says Mingarelli.
In his company near Ancona, two worlds meet. There is Gallura, in northern Sardinia, with its 140,000 hectares of cork oak woods, which account for 83% of Italian supply. And this also includes the archaic microcosm of the bucadòri, as the cork oak strippers are called. They are the elite of the cork industry. Men who make their way into the rugged cork forests with axe and machete. Their mission: to separate the bark from the trunk without damaging it. Their ancient art survives because no machine can replace the skill of the expert bucadòri.
The ritual has a special magic. At the beginning of summer, the bark begins to detach from the trunk as temperatures rise. Later, when the shimmering heat descends on the island, the cork clings firmly to the trunk again to protect the tree. Climate change, with its extreme heat waves, means that the time available for stripping the cork is much shorter.
Mingarelli comes from a world far removed from this idyll: the chemical industry. However, 24 years ago, his father left the sector of chemical construction materials. He closed his company Italsolventi and, with Diasen, launched the company’s green start-up. The Mingarelli family has four generations of experience in business transformations. The great-grandfather began with soap production. “Each generation opened up a new market for us,” says Diego Mingarelli.
The 46-year-old business economist now focuses on modern, sustainable construction methods. “Our innovation lies in the possibility of completely transforming cork and adapting the material to the endless possibilities of use in the world of architecture and design,” he says. Diasen has even coated pizza ovens and designer lamps with its thermal-insulating coating.
Compared with traditional raw materials, cork can score points thanks to its natural advantages. “The construction industry is one of the sectors with the highest land consumption,” says Mingarelli. I meet the Italian entrepreneur sitting on a hill in Rome, at the Hotel Cavalieri, where he is attending a congress of European family businesses. He strokes the white wall behind him. “That’s why we are eating up the landscape,” he says, referring to the extraction of minerals such as sand, gravel and stone. The airy lightness of cork also benefits the environment. When building materials containing cork are transported, the use of trucks is reduced by four or five times.
The natural material and the construction industry seem made for each other. In Los Angeles, for example, peak temperatures inside The Trillium building complex were reduced by more than ten degrees thanks to the use of heat-reflecting paints. Even in northern Europe, where the focus until now has been on reducing heating costs, the question of thermal insulation is becoming increasingly important, says Mingarelli. Acoustic insulation is the focus in Paris, where the versatile material is used in 14 new metro stations. Just as in a venue in the capital, in Berlin.
For the Mediterranean cork industry, the interest of building material producers comes at just the right time. In Italy, the number of companies and employees has halved in a decade. The reason is the deep sales crisis caused by the decline of natural cork stoppers for wine bottles. Since Dom Pierre Pérignon introduced cork stoppers for wine and champagne in the early 17th century, the development of the European cork industry has relied on demand from wineries around the world. In the meantime, it has been pushed out of the market by much cheaper aluminium screw caps and glass stoppers.
Mingarelli fears that this trend is not only behind the sector’s economic weakening. “It also risks damaging the ecosystem,” he says. That is why the interest of building material producers in conserving cork oak forests is so important. Incidentally, this elastic insulating material already proved its worth in Sardinia in the Bronze Age. The stones of the island’s mysterious nuraghic towers were already sealed with cork 3,500 years ago.
