Are you a pineapple lover? Pineapples!
It's funny I have the PPAM song running on my head while typing this new blog. It is just singing in and no matter what song I play on my computer, the PPAM song would just continue to play on again when I read the word Pineapple.
Anyways, I was actually trying to edit my new blog entry which I had just recently posted on bitLanders but since there's an issue with the site right now, I instead made use of the spare time in writing a new blog instead.
I have been inspired to write about this because I have been following a certain Facebook page of a government official and he had just posted that the pineapples will become soon a multi dollar generator in few months from now. This is quite exciting! And if you are wondering, I am referring to Department of Agriculture secretary - Manny Piñol. If you wan to check his Facebook page, you may click his name.
photo credit to Sec. Manny Piñol's Facebook page
What I love about this new Department of Agriculture secretary is that he is very active and a hard working one. He don't just do his job but also advise the public with what he is doing and the updates of his projects and the other government agencies too! He is very active in social media sites such as Facebook and he has been credited for being top of the government agencies who are really working day in and day out. From the start of his appointment, he had visited almost the entire Philippines, performing testing on lands and checking the best options for the farmers, fishermen and lot more.
His Facebook page has a lot of interactions in terms of commenting and sharing since he has been publishing good news almost three to five times a week! It's quite amazing how he can work and still be able to write long information on his Facebook page to update the netizens.
Going back to the Pineapple topic, Secretary Manny Piñol recently shared about Piñatex. Here's a background on the said material:
What is Piñatex
Piña means pineapple in Spanish and also in Tagalog, even the other dialects in the Philippines say the same referring to the fruit. Tex on the other hand is of course comes from the word textile. Thus it is merged together to form the term Piñatex.
"Piñatex is a new textile innovation which has economic value involved and has a better use of resources. Piñatex™ follows a “cradle-to-cradle strategy,” that takes into account the life-cycle of the product by minimizing waste, choosing sustainable processes and considering energy-consumption. Piñatex™ is strong, versatile, breathable, soft, light, flexible, and can be easily printed on, stitched and cut. Piñatex™ is a by-product of the pineapple harvest, thus no extra water, fertilizers or pesticides are required to produce Piñatex."
Piñatex provides versatility because it can be made with various thicknesses, finishes and applications depending on how or what the needs are. Piñatex™ is produced on 155cm width textile rolls. Piñatex™ had been tested according to ISO international standards for the following list:
Seam rupture
Tear & tensile strength
Light & colour fastness
Water spotting
Flexing endurance
Abrasion resistance
Resistance to ignition by cigarettes
How Does it Becomes a Leather?
This is the real question and which has been answered by the creator herself, Carmen. It was a long journey for her finding how to get the fibers to become this leather. Took her seven years to be exact but everything is history now as she has been successful in making this technology happen.
So here's the step by step process which is just a general overview on what happens behind the scene before the pineapple leaves become a textile. The fibers that make Piñatex™ come from pineapple leaves.
1st - Decortication.
The fibers are extracted from the leaves during a process called decortication, which is done at the plantation by the farming community. This is done by the farmers in the country, they do this manually which is a very tedious thing to do since farmers will be scraping these leaves leaving the tiny strands of fibers from it.
Furthermore, the by-product of decortication is bio-mass, which can be further converted into organic fertilizer or bio-gas. Both the extraction of the fibers and the consequent bio-mass will bring added revenue stream to the farming communities. Thus making everything useful, nothing will be left as a garbage in fact which makes this industry a sustainable one.
2nd - Industrial Process.
After the farmers extract these strands of fibers from the pineapple leaves, the fibers then undergo an industrial process to become a nonwoven textile, which is the base of the material Piñatex™.
Every company has a secret formula in creating the product and so Piñatex itself has its own secret too. This is process here is what they call as the "SECRET" ingredient to process the fibers and turn it to the textile material.
3rd. Export.
The final step in the making of Piñatex™ takes place at a textile finishing company in Spain, where our unique finishing process is done before being shipped all over the world.
With leather becoming more scarce and expensive, there is an enormous opening in the market for alternative materials, which to date have been partially filled by plastics and technical textiles. The arrival of a suitable material of natural origins such as Piñatex is likely to be a welcome addition in this growing market segment.
Piñatex is a mass-produced sustainable and versatile textile oriented to the following industrial sectors :
FASHION AND ACCESSORIES
FURNISHINGS
CAR AND AERONAUTIC INDUSTRIES
Who Created Piñatex?
"There is no such thing as waste. Everything can be useful."
I actually listened to this lady while researching on this matter since her advocacy awakened the curiosity in me. This lines above were some of the things she had mentioned during her story, one that she had realized after working in huge textile companies in the other part of the world.
Here's an overview of her story as well:
From Spain to the Philippines, Carmen Hijosa has embarked on a creative journey like no other. This dynamic sexagenarian born in the Asturias started her career in the leather industry in the 1990s. For 15 years, this entrepreneur at heart successfully designed and produced leather goods, selling to international department stores such as Harrods in London and Takashimaya in Tokyo. This experience led her to travel across the globe intensely and to do consultation work as a leather expert. In the early 2000’s one particular trip turned out to be life-changing. Hijosa came to the Philippines to conduct research for the Design Centre Philippines in Manila to study the local leather industry and find potential alternative materials. She first looked into sisal and abaca, a local banana tree that is used to produce hemp-like fibers. A that time Carmen Hijosa had started to question the environmental impact of leather production, resulting in unsustainable making conditions, water pollution and toxic fumes.
The Philippines is the land of the piña cloth, an ancestral textile derived from the Red Spanish pineapple leaves. This ivory-white sheer hand-woven cloth is used for wedding gowns and ceremonial attire. Taking cue from this traditional practice, Carmen Hijosa has developed Piñatex™, an innovative non-woven fabric perfected after 7 years of intense R&D. She has created a patented plant-based textile that offers texture and qualities similar to leather, but without the ecological impact.
The production of this new material is also the opportunity to provide additional income for the Filippino farmers. The fibres are extracted locally from the harvested pineapple leaves and are turned industrially into a mesh-like fabric before being sent to Spain for their final finishing.
To bring her project to the next level, Carmen Hijosa moved to London in 2010 to pursue a PhD at the Royal College of Art that she completed in 2015. In 2013 she founded her pioneering company Ananas Anam that manufactures Piñatex™ and established it within the RCA innovation creative hub. Piñatex™ appears as a vegan alternative to leather, in a time where consumers express growing concern for ethical environmental practices and animal treatments. This versatile material can be dyed, printed, and developed in an array of thicknesses and textures, which makes it highly suitable for the luxury fashion industry. It can easily replace leather and be used for handbags, shoes, and other accessories. Carmen Hijosa holds high expectations for the future of her star material. She has just won the Award for Material Innovation from the Arts Foundation UK in 2016. She hopes to provide a fully biodegradable version of Piñatex™, and to build a production model of pineapple leaves-based textile that could be exported from the Philippines to other developing countries.
What's Next for the Filipino Farmers?
This industry has started in the Philippines and the current government sees it as a huge help to the farmers in Mindanao and all over the country. With the help of the new Secretary of Department of Agriculture, this industry has started to be a realization both to the creator and to the farmers.
photo credit to Sec. Manny Piñol's Facebook page
With the latest Facebook page by Secretary Manny Piñol, he had mentioned that the pineapple leaves now offer huge income for the farmers.
Before, these pineapple leaves which, along with the pulps are left in the field to rot in the 44,000-hectare pineapple plantations in the Philippines. But it will soon become the source of huge additional income for farmers. Which really excites me and the whole country. You know in the country, most people don't like to become a farmer as there's this thought that farmers are poor ones. However, this is not a good mind setting. Farmers have a huge earning potential if given the right education and the help from different sectors including the government.
As mentioned earlier, Spanish scientist and designer, Dr. Carmen Hijosa, has developed a technology which turns the fibers taken from pineapple leaves into Piñatex, a substitute for animal leather. It is now used in the manufacturing of Piñatex bags, shoes and accessories, seat coverings and other furnishings.
Piñatex is now being developed for clothing and other products designed by designer Ally Capellino. Shoe brands Rombaut and NaeVegan and prototypes have been created by Puma and Camper using Piñatex. They proudly call it Pineapple in your shoes!
Dr. Hijosa is currently buying Pineapple fibers from Labo Multipurpose cooperative in Camarines Norte which in turn buys pineapple leaves for as low as 70 centavos to a high of P1 per kilo.
Impressive Products = Impressed DA Secretary
With the products presented to Secretary Piñol, he was deeply impressed by this new technology and right away he had understood the impact of this innovation on the lives of people in the countryside. In the provinces of North Cotabato, South Cotabato and Bukidnon, huge multinational companies like Sumifru, Dole and Del Monte lease lands from farmers to be used in planting pineapple for export.
After the said meeting, he called a good friend of him in the name of Paul Cuyegkeng who heads Sumifru Philippines and asked him if it would be possible for Sumifru to allow the landowners of their leased areas to harvest the pineapple leaves. Cuyegkeng had given in to his request and thus, farmers will soon start collecting the leaves on their land!
Government's Help
Aside from this huge help of being able to gain access to huge farms for the farmers to gather the leaves of pineapples for free, the Department of Agriculture secretary had committed to support the pineapple farmers by providing them with a modern decorticating machine to be used in harvesting the fibres from the leaves too!
This is such a great news since the farmers won't have to also manually scrape the fibers out of the leaves, instead they will be able to use machines this time which will not only make the work efficient, it will also maximize productivity.
And just another good news, top officials of Dole-Philippines, one of the country's oldest multinational companies involved in fruit production, have pledged to support the Piñatex leather production livelihood project of the Department of Agriculture by "donating" to poor families pineapple leaves from their over 18,000-hecare plantations all over Mindanao.
The Future for Filipino Farmers
My husband wants to be a farmer someday and although the thought of not using a laptop all day long scares him, I know we will be able to sustain our needs by that time, with God's help. Although not in the same line of agriculture, they are still related to each other and that he is already seeing these ideas as helpful for him too in the next years.
As addition to the things the DA Secretary had made to help the farms, he is also looking into the introduction of modern drying techniques to help abaca fibre producers improve the quality of their products. This is yet another story of how technology could improve the lives of the poor farmers in the countryside.
More good things are happening in the country. This is one of them. Our nature has given us the things we needed, from food to materials to money. Who would have thought that these pineapple leaves can be this useful?
Green Leather is what's "IN" now!
Regards,
Jean Beltran-Figues
