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  • Fashion Recycling: How Southern Designers are Re-using and Making Money

    Fashion Recycling: How Southern Designers are Re-using and Making Money

    By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

    SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

    With the rising awareness of the importance of doing fashion in an ethical and sustainable way, more and more fashion designers in the South are getting very creative. Fashion earns big money around the world: The global clothing industry is estimated to be worth US $900 billion a year.

    In Paris, the Ethical Fashion Show, now in its fifth year, showcases fashion that respects people and the environment while still being glamorous, luxurious and trendy. It has attracted designers from around the world, including Mongolia, Thailand, China, Peru and Bolivia. The show demands that all participants adhere to International Labour Organization conventions – including banning forced and child labour – respect for the environment, creating local employment and working with craftspeople to ensure skills are retained and the fashion reflects the diversity of the world’s cultures.

    In Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Felicite Mai is using pride in her nation’s top export commodity, cocoa (Ivory Coast is the world’s number one exporter of cocoa), to make smart fashion wear at affordable prices. She has turned the beige-coloured jute sacks used to ship cocoa beans around the world into clothes for men and women.

    “Ivory Coast’s economy is based on agriculture, especially cocoa and coffee. So I decided to promote these crops by creating these fashion designs,” Mai, whose real name is Maimouna Camara Gomet, told the Reuters news agency.

    “For me, it’s a way of drawing the whole world’s attention to cocoa and coffee,” she said

    Mai comes from a family of cocoa planters and is a graduate of a sewing school. She works out of a studio-cum-shop in the Treichville suburb of Abidjan.

    The clothes are usually beige, but some are dyed dark brown or blue. They include skirts, tops, trousers, shirts, waistcoats, caps, bags and accessories; she gets the sacks – most emblazoned with “Product of Ivory Coast, Cocoa” — from the city’s port warehouses. She cleans the jute cloth first, before creating the fashions.

    “I had this idea from when I was still at sewing school in 1987. Then I opened my own workshop in 1996 and I first launched these kind of designs in 2003 during a fashion contest at Divo (in the south of Ivory Coast)” said Mai, who has several assistants at her shop.

    She has been able to attract as clients local celebrities, artists and musicians and even a few from abroad.

    In Brazil, it is footwear that is getting the recycled-look treatment. The brand Melissa specializes in plastic shoes that are eco-friendly and made from 100 percent recycled materials. They use a plastic called melflex made from recovered plastic. The shoes are made in injection molds and the factory is so efficient, it has next to no waste as a byproduct. It recycles all the waste and water used in the production process. And as a plus, they make a point of paying the workers well, and supporting social and environmental causes in Brazil.

    Their secret to putting zing into recycled plastic shoes is to have high-profile, celebrity designers design some of the shoes. So far, they have had UK fashion mistress Vivienne Westwood, the Campana Brothers, and the UK-based, Iraqi-born architect Zaha Hadid. Hadid is a controversial figure who always stirs up debate, and her rubber shoes have brought attention to the brand.

    The Chilean studio Modulab has turned to recycled rubber from the car industry to make bags. The rubber comes in sheets so it is easy to cut and shape into bags, thus reducing the amount of time and energy used to make the bags. The line is called RTA (ready to assemble) and includes three types of bags: an envelope, a handbag and a messenger bag. Each sheet of recycled rubber comes with the specific slots and pins for the consumer to put the bag together at home, without any glue or sewing involved. Energy used in the making of the entire bag is 100 percent human, except in the production of the material itself.

    In Ghana, the cheeky Ghanaian businessman-cum-fashion designer Kwabena Osei Bonsu wanted to do something about the ubiquitous plastic bags that pollute the landscape of the capital, Accra.

    In Accra, a small city of 2.2 million people, up to 60 tons of plastic packaging is dumped on the streets every day, a figure that has risen by 70 per cent over the past decade.

    “I wanted to come up with an idea that would solve problems in my lifetime,” he said to the Independent.

    He came up with the brilliantly simple solution of turning these wasted and damaging plastic bags back into usable and fashionable carryalls and handbags. He collects the plastic sacks and stitches them back together. The business, Trashy Bags, employs a dozen tailors and seamstresses. Launched in December last year, it so far has collected 10 million used plastic sachets from the streets, and sold more than 6,000 bags. Handbags go for US $7.79.

    Ghana’s huge quantity of discarded plastic water bottles are gathered up for recycling too. A storage room overflows with more than 3 million sachets that have been collected and cleaned ready for recycling.

    Bonsu’s business has turned into a source of income for local people, who receive US $3.89 for 1,000 sachets – a good return where the average yearly income is US $495

    “I collect sachets because I am jobless and this gives me money,” said Hadiza Ishmael, a 55-year-old grandmother who has delivered 4,000 plastic bags. “It also makes the place look nicer.”

    Published: August 2008

    Resources

    • The Re: Fashion Awards show is a brand new fashion phenomenon, set to transform social and environmental standards in the fashion industry within a decade. The RE:Fashion Awards will take place in London in November 2008. The glittering event will see major faces from the fashion world come together to recognise the most significant development in the fashion industry of the 21st century. The deadline for budding fashion designers to enter their contest is August 20th.
      Website: http://www.refashionawards.org/
    • A photogallery of the cocoa fashions:
      here: Photogallery 1
      and here: Photogallery 2
      And a video of Mai making the garments here: Video
    • Ethical Fashion Show: Isabelle Quehe, who established the event, said “You almost never see designers from developing countries doing shows in Paris, so this brings together natural products, local fair labour, respect for the environment and finding sales outlets in Paris.” Potential designers and exhibitors can contact the Ethical Fashion Show by sending collection photos and a brief explanation on how the fashions contribute to the ethical fashion movement.
      Send contributions to: 4, rue Trousseau 75011 Paris
      Email: unilove@wanadoo.fr
    • Once inspired to get into the global fashion business, check out this business website for all the latest news, jobs and events.
      Website: http://us.fashionmag.com/news/index.php
    • A creative agency specialising in the promotion of African culture to the world. They organise RUNWAY AFRICA—Africa’s annual Fall Fashion Show featuring five of Africa’s most promising rising design stars on the runway.
      Website: http://inspirationafrica.org/aboutus.html
    • Green fashion must really be making an impact–the BBC, Britain’s venerable public broadcaster, has started an on-line fashion magazine. Called Thread. Fashion Without Victim, it is dedicated to bringing the “latest of eco-fabulous style”. Through a “unique mix of affordable fashion, exclusive videos, photo galleries and thought-provoking features” the site is committed to promoting all aspects of ethical fashion.
      Website: http://www.bbc.co.uk/thread/
    • Traidcraft fights poverty through trade, helping people in developing countries to transform their lives. Established in 1979 as a Christian response to poverty, we are the UK’s leading fair trade organisation.
      Website: http://www.traidcraftshop.co.uk/default.aspx

    Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator. 

    Creative Commons License

    This work is licensed under a
    Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

    ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

    © David South Consulting 2023

  • Tiny Homes to Meet Global Housing Crisis

    Tiny Homes to Meet Global Housing Crisis

    By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

    SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

    More than 1 billion people around the world lack decent shelter. Of these, the majority live in urban areas, usually in slums and informal settlements (UN-HABITAT).

    The world’s megacities – like Mumbai, India, where more than 22 million live in the metropolitan region – have to find a way to provide housing that is both affordable and does the minimum possible amount of harm to the environment.

    About one-third of the world’s urban dwellers live in slums, and the United Nations estimates that the number of people living in such conditions will double by 2030 as a result of rapid urbanization in developing countries.

    The fast pace of growth of India’s cities presents an enormous challenge: how to house so many people with dignity and to a good standard. India’s city slums are notorious and recently became the subject of the Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire (http://www.slumdogmillionairemovie.co.uk/).

    With a population of 1.2 billion, India needs to find 25 million homes a year to meet current demand, according to McKinsey and Co.

    Housing prices have risen by 16 percent a year for the past four years. While the middle class – estimated at over 300 million people – has piled into high-end apartments and houses, it has been the country’s low-income people who have been frozen out of the option of quality homes.

    The concept of targeting those at the ‘bottom of the pyramid’ (BOP) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fortune_at_the_Bottom_of_the_Pyramid) has drawn attention to the estimated 23 million poor urban dwellers in India, and 180 million rural families, who have savings and want to own a home. Monitor India (http://www.monitor.com/in/) believes these people have annual earnings between US $1,400 and US $3,000.

    The Indian manufacturing powerhouse Tata – which this year launched a BOP-focused car, the Tata Nano – has designed and is building, Nano Homes – small apartments outside Mumbai for US $8,600 (http://tatahousing.in/pages/home.php). It also hopes to expand to other major Indian cities as well.

    The Nano homes are built on a modest scale: there are three sizes with the smallest measuring 67 square metres. They consist of a single room that doubles as a bedroom by night with a sink, bath and toilet behind a partition.

    Criticisms include location – on the edges of major cities – where residents would have to commute long distances to get to their jobs.

    Even so, Nano apartments are so popular buyers are being chosen by lottery.

    “India’s housing crisis lies in the fact that the poor in the cities are priced out of the market,” Sundar Burra, an adviser to the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centre, a Mumbai-based housing rights organization, told Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper.

    “State supply of housing for the poor is woefully inadequate in relation to the need. Slums proliferate as a solution to this state of affairs.”

    People can get a mortgage for the homes from Tata Home Finance.

    Tata is not the only company targeting this market. India’s Matheran Realty (http://www.tmcity.in/) is building what it claim is India’s largest affordable housing project, Tanaji Malusare City, in the villages of Shirse and Akurle of Karjat (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karjat). The 15,000 homes would house 70,000 people and would sell for US $4,698.

    Another developer, Godrej Properties (http://www.godrejproperties.com/), is building a BOP housing development outside the city of Ahmedabad with apartments costing US $11,749.

    “(Property) developers have recognized that the real demand no longer lies in the premium segment and are opting to build smaller, no-frills apartments,” said Deepak Parekh of the Housing Development Finance Corporation (http://www.hdfcindia.com/).

    It estimates the affordable housing market will be worth US$ 110 billion in India by 2013 and will account for 80 percent of India’s housing market.

    “Affordable housing is not about box-sized, budget homes in far-flung places where there is no connectivity to workplaces and little surrounding infrastructure,” Parekh told HDFC’s shareholders. “Affordable housing has to be able to cut across all income segments and has to make economic sense in terms of proximity to the workplace.”

    Published: November 2009

    Resources

    1) Building and Social Housing Foundation: BSHF is an independent organisation that works both in the UK and internationally to identify innovative housing solutions and to foster the exchange of information and good practice. Website: http://www.bshf.org/home.cfm

    2) Tiny House Design Blog: The blog is full of ideas and plans for making small homes cheaply. Website: http://www.tinyhousedesign.com/

    3) A blog detailing the Tata dwellings in diagrams and photographs. Website: http://www.tslr.net/2009/06/tatas-nano-homes.html

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/05/23/debt-free-homes-for-the-poor/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/11/12/energy-efficient-wooden-houses-are-also-earthquake-safe/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/26/making-bamboo-houses-easier-to-build/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/02/12/rammed-earth-houses-china-shows-how-to-improve-and-respect-traditional-homes/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/02/12/rebuilding-after-chinese-earthquake-beautiful-bamboo-homes/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/19/securing-land-rights-for-the-poor-now-reaping-rewards/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2017/11/08/smart-cities-up-close-2013/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/05/23/solar-bottle-bulbs-light-up-dark-homes/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/09/26/3d-home-printing-landmark-10-houses-in-a-day/

    Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator. 

    Creative Commons License

    This work is licensed under a
    Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

    ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

    © David South Consulting 2023

  • Woman Restaurant Entrepreneur Embraces Brand-Driven Growth

    Woman Restaurant Entrepreneur Embraces Brand-Driven Growth

    By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

    SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

    The journey of Zhang Lan is the tale of an entrepreneur who exemplifies the story of globalization. She has gone from working many part-time jobs while studying overseas, to becoming one of China’s most successful food entrepreneurs.

    Starting with a very small and humble restaurant specializing in spicy food from China’s Sichuan province, Zhang has cannily used branding innovation to grow her business and build her reputation in the food trade. Today the company she started, South Beauty Group (southbeauty.com), has 71 restaurants, most in major cities such as Beijing and Shanghai.

    A series of bold moves focused on raising the profile of her restaurants and the South Beauty Group has paid off: the group was singled out by the China Hotel Association as one of the top 10 Chinese restaurant brands. By riding the country’s breakneck growth and urbanization, her restaurant group has enjoyed double-digit growth in recent years in revenue and profits.

    Zhang’s mission is to revitalize the Chinese restaurant scene by introducing a more upscale and consistent dining experience.

    China’s restaurant industry is booming and represents a significant opportunity: it is said it will have revenue of 3.7 trillion yuan (US $590 billion) by 2015 (China Daily).

    “Most people in China don’t know how to present food. I am happy that I have given some importance to the appearance of food,” Zhang told the China Daily newspaper.

    “I strike a balance between popular and high-end brands in my daily life. This also works for South Beauty Group, which aims to attract customers to a modern place to enjoy high-grade and popular Chinese cuisine.”

    Her business mission is to take the group outside of China and become a global brand.

    “Buoyed by the booming domestic high-end catering market, South Beauty Group is looking to be a major luxury brand in the global catering industry. It is not an easy task considering that there are different cultures and eating habits. But my past experience has taught me that opportunities often come along with challenges,” she told China Daily.

    Zhang’s business story started in a journey to Canada to pursue further education. To make ends meet, at one time she took on six part-time jobs, including washing dishes and food preparation.

    Anybody who has gone to another country to work and better their life knows how hard this can be: “During that period, I was so tired by the end of the day that I had to lift my legs onto the bed with my hands,” Zhang said.

    But working hard in restaurants and beauty shops earned her US $20,000 in savings within two years.

    She returned to Beijing in the early 1990s, a time when the country was undergoing significant market reforms. She opened a small restaurant in Beijing in 1991 serving Sichuan cuisine. Dining out was still a new experience in a country that had spent decades under austere communism. She made her restaurant different by emphasizing cleanliness and unique flavours for the food. She even used the design of the restaurant to set it apart: she gathered bamboo from Sichuan and used it to transform the restaurant into a little bamboo house.

    This attention to detail paid off. By 2000, Zhang had been successful enough to give her the confidence to open her first South Beauty Restaurant in Beijing’s China World Trade Center, a high-end office building in the Central Business District. It proved to be a great way to boost her business’s profile.

    “It was a bold decision, as rents were high, but I knew the returns would also be high,” she said.

    By 2006, she was successful enough to make another brave move: open a luxury restaurant called the Lan Club, in Beijing. Having learned about the importance of distinguishing herself in the ever-growing restaurant marketplace in China, she invited world-famous designer Philippe Starck (http://www.starck.com/en/) to design the restaurant.

    For Zhang, there was a bigger strategy at work: “I was not disheartened when some people said that I threw money away like dirt and 12 million yuan (US $1.92 million) was too much for a design draft. But I got great publicity and brand recognition with this design, far more than what is received by most companies which spend millions of yuan on television advertisements. Not everyone in China can boast of a Starck design in their restaurant.”

    In 2007, the company also started cooking meals for airlines flying between China and France, the Netherlands and South Korea. In 2008, it won the bid to be food and beverage provider for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and was named official caterer to the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.

    “These international events have given us great confidence in planning overseas expansion,” Zhang said.

    The hallmarks of the dining experience at a South Beauty Restaurant include dramatic food presentation, upscale décor, a pleasant dining atmosphere and critically, waiting staff who are informed about the dishes they are serving.

    Dramatic food preparation includes cooking food at the table for the diners and serving stir-fried shrimp on a plate with a goldfish bowl filled with live fish.

    “I want to change the cheap price and bad atmosphere tag that most Westerners have about Chinese food,” Zhang told China Daily.

    She has attracted investors to take a stake in the business and become the second richest female entrepreneur in China, according to the 2011 China Restaurant Rich List.

    While the international economic crisis is still damaging growth in the United States and Europe, Zhang still plans to go global. She is looking to initially expand into Asia before moving into Europe and North America.

    “Our mission is to promote authentic Chinese cuisine across the world. With (the) Chinese economy growing steadily and its cultural influence gaining, it will not be long before we see some big global Chinese catering companies, much like McDonald’s,” Zhang concluded. And it looks like South Beauty Group wants to lead the way.

    Published: November 2012

    Resources 

    1) Restaurant Branding: A website dedicated to discussing restaurant branding and how to do it. Website:http://www.restaurantbranding.com/

    2) How to Start a Restaurant: Tips from the Entrepreneur.com website. Website:http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/73384

    3) Top tips on opening a restaurant from successful celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. Website:http://www.channel4.com/programmes/ramsays-kitchen-nightmares/articles/gordon-ramsays-top-tips-for-starting-a-restaurant

    4) Tips on how to handle the start-up costs of staring a restaurant. Website:http://www.inc.com/articles/201111/business-start-up-costs-restaurant.html

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/10/acai-berry-brazils-boon/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/08/14/brazil-preserves-family-farms-keeping-food-local/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/10/brazilian-restaurant-serves-amazonian-treats/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/20/china-consumer-market-asian-perspective-helps/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/19/cooking-up-a-recipe-to-end-poverty/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/11/havanas-restaurant-boom-augers-in-new-age-of-entrepreneurs/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/24/latin-american-food-renaissance-excites-diners/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/11/urban-farming-to-tackle-global-food-crisis/

    Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator. 

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/05/southern-innovator-issue-2/

    Creative Commons License

    This work is licensed under a
    Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

    ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5311-1052.

    © David South Consulting 2023

  • Rainforest Gum Gets Global Market

    Rainforest Gum Gets Global Market

    By David South, Development Challenges, South-South Solutions

    SOUTH-SOUTH CASE STUDY

    Mexico is home to the second largest rainforest in the Americas after the Amazon jungle. But the country’s forests face serious threats from logging, cattle ranching and agriculture. As much as 80 percent of Mexico’s original forests have already been lost.

    A group of Mexican farmers is now using sophisticated product marketing to preserve their income, and the 1.3 million hectares of rainforest as well. They are called chicleros and they harvest the gum needed to make natural chewing gum, a once-booming industry laid waste by the arrival of synthetic chewing gum in the 1950s. Their story is an excellent example of how a declining industry can turn things around with a smart plan and sophisticated marketing.

    A collection of 56 cooperatives comprising 2,000 chicleros – called Consorcio Chiclero – is now making, marketing and selling its own brand of chewing gum: Chicza (http://www.chicza.com/index.php). The chicleros are supporting a community of 10,000 people across the three states of Yucatán, Campeche and Quintana Roo.

    Gum has been chewed in Mexico to clean teeth as far back as the ancient Mayan people in the second century AD.

    The gum harvesting business was dying out and young people, put off by the low pay, were leaving for jobs elsewhere. The adminstrators of the chiclero co-operative created Chicza Rainforest Gum brand to save the industry. They made a deal with Britain’s Waitrose supermarket chain, which specializes in fair trade products, and the gum is being launched in 100 stores.

    The brightly coloured packages of chewing gum are now being sold as organic and a way to preserve the forest. Frustrated by the decades of decline and attendant poverty and community decay, the chicleros decided to take matters into their own hands. Five years ago they decided to avoid the middlemen who would buy their raw gum products, and instead manufacture and market the chewing gum themselves. And it is paying off: by adding value to the raw product, each farmer’s income has grown six times higher than he would earn as a mere provider of raw material.

    The gum comes in three flavours: wild mint, heirloom lime and spearmint. Future flavours will blend tropical fruits, herbs and spices.

    The Consorcio Chiclero coordinates the production, the logistics, the trade and the finances for the manufacture of gum from the chicozapote tree (Manilkara zapota).

    Certified organic, the Chicza gum is completely natural and free of synthetic ingredients and also biodegrades when it is discarded – a boon to city governments who hate the mess and cost of traditional gum left on sidewalks.

    The farmers work in the rainforest at the southern end of Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucat%C3%A1n_Peninsula), bordering Guatemala and Belize. It is a place with one of the most bio diverse ecosystems in the world, and an environment the farmers are in harmony with. The chicle gum (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicle) is harvested from chicozapote trees – some living for more than 300 years – by hacking z-shaped cuts into the bark of the 100 foot trees. The harmless cuts zig zag down the tree and a bucket is placed at the bottom to collect the dripping sap.

    Once collected, the sap is boiled, dried and made into a sticky paste, which is then kneaded and shaped into bricks called marquetas. Each marqueta is carefully marked by its maker. Since the sustainable management of their rainforests is certified by FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) (http://www.fsc.org/), these marks contain relevant information that tells the name of the chiclero who harvested it, and the exact location of the harvested tree in the rainforest. Few products offer such perfect traceability.

    “I started following my dad around the rainforest when I was 10 and working when I was 12,” farmer Porfirio Banos told The Guardian newspaper. “I am a chiclero to my core.”

    Working in a remote area of rainforest jungle with just spider monkeys for company, the chicleros are paid by the amount of chicle harvested

    “We don’t kill the trees like farmers do when they clear land to grow corn or graze cattle,” says Roberto Aguilar, 60. “We leave a wound, it’s true, but eight years after it is healed and producing chicle again.”

    The chicleros face two main risks while doing the job: falling from the trees if their rope gives out; and being bitten by poisonous snakes.

    Chicle was once the basis of all commercial chewing gum. Beginning in New York 141 years ago, it was the only source for chewing gum until the 1950s, when synthetic substitutes destroyed the industry.

    It was the economic desperation of a Mexican general, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, living in exile in the United States in 1869, that gave birth to gum-chewing as a global practice. Working with a local inventor, Thomas Adams, he tried to use the chicle to make a rubber substitute. But when this failed, Adams added sugar and flavouring, making chewing gum.

    Apart from being a great chew, the natural gum’s unique selling point is saving money: local governments tight for cash are looking for other ways to deal with the menace of chewing gum on pavements. A small fortune is spent every year trying to keep streets clean of gum. The British alone spend over UK £150 million every year trying to clean their streets of chewing gum.

    And despite the global recession, the chicleros are optimistic they can do well: during the Great Depression of the 1930s, chewing gum was an affordable treat and sold well.

    Published: April 2009

    Resources

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/10/acai-berry-brazils-boon/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/10/brazilian-restaurant-serves-amazonian-treats/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/17/connoisseur-chocolate-from-the-south-gets-a-higher-price/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/01/indonesian-food-company-helps-itself-by-making-farmers-more-efficient/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/24/latin-american-food-renaissance-excites-diners/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/31/rainforest-rubbers-save-lives/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/11/10/saving-the-amazon-forest-while-making-a-living/

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2022/10/17/west-african-chocolate-success-story/

    Development Challenges, South-South Solutions was launched as an e-newsletter in 2006 by UNDP’s South-South Cooperation Unit (now the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation) based in New York, USA. It led on profiling the rise of the global South as an economic powerhouse and was one of the first regular publications to champion the global South’s innovators, entrepreneurs, and pioneers. It tracked the key trends that are now so profoundly reshaping how development is seen and done. This includes the rapid take-up of mobile phones and information technology in the global South (as profiled in the first issue of magazine Southern Innovator), the move to becoming a majority urban world, a growing global innovator culture, and the plethora of solutions being developed in the global South to tackle its problems and improve living conditions and boost human development. The success of the e-newsletter led to the launch of the magazine Southern Innovator. 

    https://davidsouthconsulting.org/2021/03/05/southern-innovator-issue-3/

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    This work is licensed under a
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