Mercedez-Benz Made From Coconuts?

The northern Brazilian state of Para is in the largest contiguous tropical rainforest in the world, four times the size of Germany. To protect the rainforest, it’s critical to build a sustainable economy for the 42 million people that live in Brazil’s rural areas. It starts with coconuts. There’s a well established market for coconut milk and meat there, but the shells are discarded or burned, adding to the pall of smoke hanging over rainforest land cleared for subsistence agriculture. In a small way, that situation is changing as the unlikely partnership between a tiny Brazilian nonprofit group and one of the world’s biggest auto giants, DaimlerChrylser, is getting those coconut shells out of the waste stream. In the small community of Praia Grande on idyllic Marajo Island off Brazil’s northern coast, 10 workers are employed by the modest, low-tech factory that processes the coconut fiber, turning it into headrests and seat padding for Mercedes cars and trucks. There are eight facilities like the one on Marajo Island, and together they keep 900 farm families at work gathering the coconut husks. The project began in 1991, with the creation of Program Pobreze e Meio Ambiente na Amazonia (POEMA), which uses […]

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