How People Profit Off Pineapple Scraps | World Wide Waste

How People Profit Off Pineapple Scraps | World Wide Waste

Once deemed worthless, pineapple leaves experienced a renaissance when a visionary designer resurrected a centuries-old technique to extract fibers from this tropical fruit. Harnessing this innovation, she successfully crafted a compelling leather alternative and introduced a novel type of yarn into the world.

then we've got this which is really a

metallic it's quite flashy fashion

people love it

pineapple is more popular than ever

the crop grows on over 3 800 square

miles worldwide enough to cover New York

City 10 times over

but about half of every fruit ends up as

waste

Carmen ijosa wants to convince Growers

they can turn a profit from their

leftovers it's really the Queen of of

fibers famous Brands like Nike already

use her product called peanutex

and Carmen is not alone entrepreneurs in

other parts of the world are making

money from Pineapple scraps here are

three companies turning the fruit into

textiles

disposable plates

and eco-friendly cleaners

the idea for textiles made from

pineapples is nothing new it actually

dates back to the 1500s

pineapples come from South America but

once they made their way to Europe the

fruit became a status symbol gifted to

royalty like King Charles II and Spanish

King Ferdinand II the Spanish brought

the fruit to the Philippines where

locals turned it into a fabric called

Pina

it was mainly used to make barong

Tagalog a traditional formal shirt that

centuries-old technique inspired Carmen

when she first heard about it 30 years

ago I was working with leather at the

time but I realized the unsustainability

of the leather manufacturing processes

and I discovered natural fibers

pineapple leaves turned out to have the

perfect mix of strength and flexibility

and they can grow up to six feet long

that gave me the idea of what if I make

Amish not unlike what leather is she

spent decades perfecting her process

before she launched her company ananas

Anam in 2016. at the start it was really

like what what are you doing you know

why not keep using leather

her research resulted in two different

products Pina text which mimics the

qualities of animal leather

and Pina yarn a replacement for yarn

I'm a one you can call a Serial

entrepreneur

ananasanam partners with the Dole

Sunshine Company and independent Farmers

to employ over 500 people

workers Harvest pineapple leaves that

would otherwise be burned or left to rot

and run them through a machine that

extracts the fibers

the sun dries and Browns them in just a

few hours

the fibers are then shipped to Barcelona

to become Pina yarn

this machine acts like a guillotine

chopping the longer strands into

manageable pieces

a carting machine straightens the fibers

then grinds them until they resemble

cotton

the Baler compacts the mass into tight

squares

the fibers are then transported to

Portugal where they're spun into the

final product

to make pinatex a needle punching

machine knits those same ground fibers

with threads made from cornstarch

the result is a thick fabric

the sheet passes through a 30 meter long

conveyor belt to be dyed and dried

a resin made from plants and petroleum

is used for color and adds durability

then a heated roller flattens the

textile and dries the resin

the company says it's working to make

peanutex entirely plant-based pinatex is

95 made from renewable resources so

we've got a five percent to work on

one square meter of pinatex uses around

16 pineapple plants worth of leaves

the company says it saves 825 tons of

leaves from being burned each year

ananasanam sells its products to Big

Brands like Nike and Hugo Boss along

with smaller companies that make

notepads backpacks and Handbags ecosa

says she plans to explore other textile

Alternatives in the future

I'm here in Spain and I'm already

looking at what is being used

traditionally you come back to me in two

years time and I will answer this

question

pineapple leaves might be good for

making textiles but what about the rest

of the fruit in Colombia a company

called life back shreds pineapple crowns

to make compostable plates the mixture

is Blended with recycled paper and

turned into sheets that are left out to

dry Under the Sun a machine presses the

sheets into form if these disposable

plates end up in a place with Soil and

Water tiny seeds inside will blossom in

just a few days

generated

on a busy day workers at lifepak can

turn out 10 000 eco-friendly plates

is

in addition to plates the company also

makes sandwich containers and coffee cup

sleeves that contain seeds from edible

plants like cilantro amaranth and

strawberry

life pack caps its own carbon footprint

by working with local suppliers

foreign

the plant's owners charge nothing for

the pineapple crowns they're happy that

someone is willing to turn their waste

into a resource

is important

husband and wife team Claudia Barona and

Andres benavidez founded life Pack 12

years ago in the city of Kali the couple

has won several small Business Awards

and they even appeared on the Colombian

version of Shark Tank

is

Colombia like nearly every country in

the world is trying to reduce plastic

waste in 2017 the country introduced a

tax on single-use Plastics that

increases each year

and in some cities informal Pickers are

now paid as Municipal workers

but getting consumers to buy these

products isn't easy

is

the life pack plates retail at about two

and a half dollars per dozen that's more

than double the price of plastic plates

from a big box store despite their

higher price point lifepec has been able

to capitalize on growing demand for

sustainable packaging which has

increased by 40 since the company

started

its plates are now sold in three large

Supermarket chains domestically

the company also handles dozens of

orders through its website each week

with a handful of customers in the U.S

Platos

is is

life Pack's next challenge is to

modernize its equipment so it can boost

production

Andres and Claudia also plan to

franchise the business and expand into

new countries to help more people cut

back on plastic one Plate at a time even

if you don't eat off of pineapple plates

you can still use the fruit to do the

dishes in Vietnam one company uses

pineapple Peels and cores to make

natural soaps and detergents the founder

lead DUI Huang says they're safer for

the planet and people so safe he drinks

the stuff every day

fermented fruit is part of a new trend

cleaning with enzymes instead of harsh

chemicals does it actually work

throughout history people have used all

sorts of stuff to wash up everything

from animal fat to human urine in the

early 20th century scientists figured

out how to make suds in a lab using

fossil fuels that paved the way for all

kinds of synthetic gels powders and

cleaning chemicals which are all

detergents so much wider she can

actually see the difference instantly

the problem is they were full of stuff

that water treatment plants weren't

built to clean out like phosphorus and

nitrogen

when those elements flood waterways they

can make algae grow faster creating

thick layers of muck that suffocate Life

Below that's exactly what happened in

North America in the 1960s Lake Erie is

almost biologically dead

today detergent pollution has spread

around the world foaming up rivers and

fueling overgrown algae

fuwa biotech is betting that fruit

cleaners are the next chapter for

cleaning products

the name fua comes from the phrase fruit

Warrior the company buys fruit waste

from a factory that makes canned

pineapple

workers here chopped thousands of them

every day

this pile is from just a half day's work

these used to rot in nearby landfills

creating bad smells and methane a

powerful Planet warming gas

now workers load the scraps onto a Truck

and Travel about two miles to the

production site

here the team unloads the fruit skins

and washes themselves

next they mix together the first

ingredients sugar and water

uses about two metric tons of sugar

every month

workers add the pineapple peels to the

sugar water and wait for the mixture to

start to ferment

fermentation is when microbes like

bacteria or Yeast break down complex

molecules like sugar into simpler stuff

like alcohol

it's how barley becomes beer and grapes

become wine

at fua fermentation is how waste becomes

cleaning fluids but the secret isn't

alcohol it's the enzymes and acids the

pineapples will release

enzymes are molecules that speed up

chemical reactions like digestion in the

human body

certain enzymes can fight germs by

entering cells and breaking them apart

from the inside this can either kill

bacteria or just slow them down enough

that they probably won't make you sick

but to make those germs stopping enzymes

from Plants you have to ferment the

right mix of ingredients for just the

right amount of time

workers here stir the mixture every day

after about a month it looks like this

by two months this glob of bacteria and

microorganisms forms that's how you know

it's working

the founders don't keep any of their

process a secret

Huang says he learned this technique

from

ponbong she's a scientist and Buddhist

nun who figured out the formula then

shared it freely for others to use

after the mixture ferments for three

months there's enough acid and enzymes

for it to work as a cleaner now it's

ready to be filtered

foreign

the leftover solids become fertilizer

for nearby Farms and the remaining

liquid is the base for everything fuwa

makes things

fua buys those oils from local farmers

who make them using agricultural waste

like stems and leaves

the final mixture is bottled and shipped

to mini Marts around Vietnam or to

online customers in most countries one

bottle of dish soap sells for just over

two dollars

Huang says that's less than the cost of

similar imported products

[Music]

fuwa uses an on-site lab to test its

products

and it looks at competitor stuff as well

measuring the ph and testing for other

additives

cleaning with fermented fruit is a

fairly new concept but there's evidence

it has a lot of potential

researchers compared a pineapple enzyme

mixture to bleach in water and found it

killed one type of bacteria equally well

and early research suggests fruit

enzymes might even make Wastewater

cleaner we know more about common

chemical cleaners like bleach they kill

lots of germs but come with other risks

Huang started making fruit cleaners when

his wife now the company's CEO developed

eczema

um

[Music]

[Music]

Studies have linked cleaning products to

skin irritation and breathing problems

including asthma

when used and stored properly they're

safe for most people but mixing bleach

with the wrong cleaners can create

deadly gas which happens thousands of

times per year in the United States

so could we one day replace household

bleach and detergents with fermented

pineapples we asked an expert you'll be

surprised yes totally yes but he also

said we need more research there's only

certain number of bacteria that has been

tested so probably got to do a wide

range of studies with a wide range of

microorganisms to ensure that it's

really effective enzyme cleaners pose

another challenge shelf life it would be

one of the major issues with certain

temperature it might be inactivated

fuwa says its products can last about

two years which is about as long as most

chemical cleaning sprays

still fua has more work to do

with so much pineapple processing in the

region the company says it has lots of

waste to work with

but mainly the founders want people to

know there's a gentler alternative

foreign