Inventor finds good use for coconut husk - The Coconet
MANILA, February 3, 2006 (STAR) Imagine turning a worthless waste material into an innovative, biodegradable product that protects the environment, promotes plant growth and gives jobs to poor farmers.
Former agriculture college dean Justino Arboleda, 56, has done just that.
Arboleda has turned the lowly husk of the coconut fruit, the most ubiquitous plant in his native Philippines, into an award-winning product.
His innovation makes use of the husk fibers to produce a tough but biodegradable netting that anchors the soil on sloping land as well as river banks, protecting against erosion while encouraging the growth of vegetation.
The product, called "coconet," has been adopted in infrastructure projects all over this Southeast Asian archipelago, as well as in China and Sri Lanka.
It landed the top prize of the 2005 BBC World Challenge, where it beat some 456 entries from 90 countries for best innovative grassroots project and earned Arboleda a $20,000 prize and recognition from both BBC and Newsweek magazine.
A late 1980s study commissioned by the Manila-based Asian Development Bank into the conditions of millions of coconut farmers in his impoverished Bicol region inspired Arboleda’s invention.
The study he conducted found that "most farmers in Bicol live below the poverty line," unable to earn enough money off their small plots, Arboleda said.
The dried coconut meat, or "copra," was the only part of the tall plant that had recognized economic value  the raw material for vegetable oil, soap, animal feed and industrial processes.
The discarded husks were the largest waste product of the coconut-growing regions. Arboleda estimates the Philippines produces 12 billion coconut husks a year with 75 percent of them thrown away.
"We wanted to give jobs to the farmers, especially the women," who often are left idle when the coconut crop has been harvested, he said.
"We found a way to mill (coconut) husks, convert them to fibers and bring (the fibers) to the houses" of the farmers, where their wives would spin them into a tough thread which in turn is woven into the netting.
The net could then be laid onto sloping land, especially the kind left behind in road construction.
Source:
http://www.newsflash.org/2004/02/hl/hl103662.htm
