Brasília, February 11, 2004 (Agência Brasil - ABr) - Using coconut shells to make pots for plants and soft drink bottles, instead of palm fibers, to make brooms. Activities like these, as well as helping preserve the environment, have been an important factor in generating employment and income for low income communities. The list of the most recent studies includes utilization of Brazilian vegetable sponge (derived from gourds). In the '50's, before the introduction of the synthetic product, vegetable sponge was part of Brazilian consumer habits, not just for bodily hygiene, but also for housecleaning.
Two years ago, in order to revive the use of vegetable sponge, which, relegated to the category of "outdated things," had virtually disappeared from the country's kitchens and bathrooms, a small business entrepreneur, Silvio Lana, began cultivating the plant with help from the Sebrae (Small Business Assistance Enterprise), in Ponte Nova, in the Forest Zone of Minas Gerais.
According to Lana, the idea of the micro-firm was to assemble a "quilt," that is, a public-private partnership to generate jobs and income from beginning to end of the vegetable sponge productive chain. He emphasizes that the greatest advantage in cultivating the sponge is in the generation of income in the countryside, through the aggregation of value. This is the case because the product can be cultivated and processed by members of a single family within the bounds of the Family Farming Program.
Besides cultivating the plant, the small businessman is already using the plant fiber to make various decorative items, such as floral arrangements, bags, sandals, mats, lampshades, and jewelry. To propagate vegetable sponge art and creativity, Lana has been giving courses in various Agrarian Reform settlements around the country.
He recalls the numerous benefits from sponge cultivation. In the first place, it is a product that does not pollute. When it is discarded, it becomes organic fertilizer, resupplying nature itself, the opposite of synthetic sponge, which is a solid residue hard to decompose. (DAS)
