Anthropologie Celebrates Earth Day With Giant Balls of Cork

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The visual teams at Anthropologie are always using their noggin's breaking down forms objects and assembling them into complex geometric shapes or organic forms for their window displays. For this Earth Day, Anthropologie asked its employees to collect wine corks for their window displays. The Chicago Avenue store used the 30,000 corks they gathered to make 5 large balls which were inspired by a Tara Donnovan sculpture at the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center.

Manager at the Chicago Ave location, Casey Wasniewski tells us it was an immense effort that involved all her employees and three visual merchandising interns bringing in gallon-bags of the corks for the visuals team to assemble into the displays. Even Salem Washington-based Cork Forest Conservation Alliance chipped in by sending two large boxes containing several thousand corks. The CFCA operates a cork recycling program, which runs programs and directly implements programs to help and increase awareness of Mediterranean cork forests.

Many of Anthropologie's stores are participating in the Earth Day 2011 promotion but few were as involved as the Chicago stores. The three Chicagoland stores collected around 90,000 corks. The Oakbrook store took a more organic free form design approach while Southport location was more colorful. In May, after the installations come down, the stores will ether silent auction them off or send them to The Cork Forest Conservation Alliance for recycling either of which which will be the first time Anthropologie has partnered with a philanthropic organization.
· Anthropologie [Official Site]
· Cork Forest Conservation Alliance [Official Site]