It happens to the best of us. We order one item as a birthday or wedding gift for an aunt...

Pop the cork for cork. This durable, comfy-under-bare-feet flooring material is definitely worth celebrating. It's sustainable, made from the bark of the fast-growing cork oak (Quercus suber) tree-the same bark that corks your wine and champagne bottles and displays your thumbtacked memos. Harvested without damaging the tree it grows on, the bark is regenerated in about ten years' time. Because of its natural, honeycomb-like cellular structure, cork has a soft and cushiony feel and is a good insulator. It also absorbs sound, and is resistant to moisture, mold, and rot.

Never seen a cork oak tree? They're native to the Mediterranean region, and Portugal is the largest producer. After careful harvest by hand, the cork is first used to make wine stoppers; the material that remains is ground, mixed with binders, and molded into blocks which are then cut into tiles for flooring-thus, there is almost no waste at all in the production process. Natural cork flooring has much to recommend it, but be aware that cork-vinyl composite floor tiles are made with polyvinyl chloride (PVC). It's worth noting that in recent years, despite the increased interest in cork flooring, the cork industry has actually been in decline, due to the development and aggressive marketing of alternative wine stoppers: plastic "corks" and screw tops. Wine stoppers represent about 70 percent of total cork profits, so this development is a real threat to the entire industry. Cork-industry representatives are working to reverse this trend, and to promote cork as the only sustainable, responsible choice for stopping wine bottles-not to mention the nostalgic favorite

Is your house too hot? Too cold? To make it just right, insulation is a cost-effective, easy way...