Shadowing Practice: How People Profit Off Pineapple Scraps | World Wide Waste | Business Insider - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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These pineapple leaves used to be worthless.
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These pineapple leaves used to be worthless.
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But about a decade ago,
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a designer revived a centuries-old technique to extract fibers from the fruit.
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She used it to create a convincing alternative to leather and a new type of yarn.
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Then we've got this, which is really a metallic.
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It's quite flashy.
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Fashion people love it.
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Pineapple is more popular than ever.
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The crop grows on over 3,800 square miles worldwide,
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enough to cover New York City ten times over.
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But about half of every fruit ends up as waste.
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Carmen Ijosa wants to convince growers they can turn a profit from their leftovers.
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It's really the queen of fibers.
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Famous brands like Nike already use her product, called Piñatex.
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And Carmen is not alone.
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Entrepreneurs in other parts of the world are making money from pineapple scraps.
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Here are three companies turning the fruit into textiles,
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disposable plates, and eco-friendly cleaners.
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The idea for textiles made from pineapples is nothing new.
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It actually dates back to the 1500s.
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Pineapples come from South America,
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but once they made their way to Europe,
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the fruit became a status symbol,
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gifted to royalty, like King Charles II and Spanish King Ferdinand II.
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The Spanish brought the fruit to the Philippines,
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where locals turned it into a fabric called piña.
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It was mainly used to make Barong Tagalog a traditional formal shirt.
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That centuries-old technique inspired Carmen when she first heard about it 30 years ago.
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I was working with leather at the time,
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but I realized the unsustainability of the leather manufacturing processes,
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and I discovered natural fibers.
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Pineapple leaves turned out to have the perfect mix of strength and flexibility,
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and they can grow up to six feet long.
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That gave me the idea of what if I make a mesh not unlike what leather is.
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She spent decades perfecting her process before she launched her company,
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Ananas Anam, in 2016.
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At the start, it was really like, what are you doing?
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You know, why not keep using leather?
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Her research resulted in two different products.
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Piñatex, which mimics the qualities of animal leather,
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and Piñayarn, a replacement for yarn.
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I'm what you can call a serial entrepreneur.
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Ananas Anam partners with the Dole Sunshine Company and independent farmers to employ over 500 people.
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Workers harvest pineapple leaves that would otherwise be burned or left to rot,
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and run them through a machine that extracts the fibers.
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The sun dries and browns them in just a few hours.
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The fibers are then shipped to Barcelona to become piña yarn.
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This machine acts like a guillotine,
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chopping the longer strands into manageable pieces.
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A carding machine straightens the fibers,
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then grinds them until they resemble cotton.
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The baler compacts the mass into tight squares.
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The fibers are then transported to Portugal,
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where they're spun into the final product.
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To make piñatex, a needle-punching machine knits those same ground fibers with threads made from cornstarch.
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The result is a thick fabric.
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The sheet passes through a 30-meter long conveyor belt to be dyed and dried.
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A resin made from plants and petroleum is used for color and adds durability.
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Then a heated roller flattens the textile and dries the resin.
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The company says it's working to make Piñatex entirely plant-based.
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Piñatex is 95% made from renewable resources,
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so we've got a 5% to work on.
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square meter of piñatex uses around 16 pineapple plants worth of leaves.
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The company says it saves 825 tons of leaves from being burned each year.
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Ananas Anam sells its products to big brands like Nike and Hugo Boss,
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along with smaller companies that make notepads, backpacks, and handbags.
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Ijosa says she plans to explore other textile alternatives in the future.
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I'm here in Spain and I'm already looking at what is being used traditionally.
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So come back to me in two years' time and I will answer this question."
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Pineapple leaves might be good for making textiles,
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but what about the rest of the fruit?
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In Colombia, a company called LifePak shreds pineapple crowns to make compostable plates.
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The mixture is blended with recycled paper and turned into sheets that are left out to dry under the sun.
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A machine presses the sheets into form.
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If these disposable plates end up in a place with soil and water,
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tiny seeds inside will blossom in just a few days.
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On a busy day, workers at LifePak can churn out 10,000 eco-friendly plates.
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In addition to plates, the company also makes sandwich containers and coffee cup sleeves that contain seeds from edible plants like cilantro,
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amaranth, and strawberry.
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LifePak caps its own carbon footprint by working with local suppliers.
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To make our paper and paper, we don't cut trees.
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And that's an essential factor because we let 16 trees cut each ton of product made by us.
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resources pineapple waste from a nearby processing plant.
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The plant's owners charge nothing for the pineapple crowns.
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They're happy that someone is willing to turn their waste into a resource.
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Husband and wife team Claudia Barona and Andres Benevides founded LifePak 12 years ago in in the city of Cali.
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The couple has won several small business awards,
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and they even appeared on the Colombian version of Shark Tank.
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Colombia, like nearly every country in the world,
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is trying to reduce plastic waste.
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In 2017, the country introduced a tax on single-use plastics that increases each year.
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And in some cities, informal pickers are now paid as municipal workers.
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But getting consumers to buy these products isn't easy.
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The LifePak plates retail at about $2.50 per dozen.
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That's more than double the price of plastic plates from a big box store.
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Despite their higher price point,
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LifePak has been able to capitalize on growing demand for sustainable packaging,
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which has increased by 40% since the company started.
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Its plates are now sold in three large supermarket chains domestically.
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The company also handles dozens of orders through its website each week,
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with a handful of customers in the U.S.
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We could make about 6,000 and 12,000 plates.
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In fact, right now there's more demand than offer, so we're oversold.
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That means that the answer to the client is positive and that the product has a market.
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Lifepak's next challenge is to modernize its equipment so it can boost production.
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Andres and Claudia also plan to franchise the business and expand into new countries to help more people cut back on plastic,
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one plate at a time.
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Even if you don't eat off of pineapple plates,
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you can still use the fruit to do the dishes.
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In Vietnam, one company uses pineapple peels and cores to make natural soaps and detergents.
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The founder, Le Duy Hoang,
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says they're safer for the planet and people.
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So safe, he drinks the stuff every day.
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We can eat the fruit.
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Fermented fruit is part of a new trend.
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Cleaning with enzymes instead of harsh chemicals.
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Does it actually work?
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Throughout history, people have used all sorts of stuff to wash up.
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Everything from animal fat to human urine.
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In the early 20th century,
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scientists figured out how to make suds in a lab using fossil fuels.
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That paved the way for all kinds of synthetic gels,
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powders, and cleaning chemicals, which are all detergents.
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So much whiter, she can actually see the difference instantly.
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The problem is, they were full of stuff that water treatment plants weren't built to clean out,
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like phosphorus and nitrogen.
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When those elements flood waterways,
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they can make algae grow faster,
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creating thick layers of muck that suffocate life below.
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That's exactly what happened in North America in the 1960s.
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Lake Erie is almost biologically dead.
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Today, detergent pollution has spread around the world,
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foaming up rivers and fueling overgrown algae.
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Fuwa Biotech is betting that fruit cleaners are the next chapter for cleaning products.
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The name Fuwa comes from the phrase fruit warrior.
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The company buys fruit waste from a factory that makes canned pineapple.
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Workers here chop thousands of them every day.
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This pile is from just a half day's work.
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These used to rot in nearby landfills,
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creating bad smells and methane, a powerful planet-warming gas.
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Now, workers load the scraps onto a truck and travel about two miles to the production site.
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Here, the team unloads the fruit skins and washes them.
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Next, they mix together the first ingredients, sugar and water.
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Fuwa uses about two metric tons of sugar every month.
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I eat for the food and the food.
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So if there's no road,
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I can't go to the menu.
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Workers add the pineapple peels to the sugar water and wait for the mixture to start to ferment.
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Fermentation is when microbes, like bacteria or yeast,
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break down complex molecules like sugar into simpler stuff like alcohol.
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It's how barley becomes beer and grapes become wine.
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At Fuwa, fermentation is how waste becomes cleaning fluids.
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But the secret isn't alcohol.
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It's the enzymes and acids the pineapples will release.
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Enzymes are molecules that speed up chemical reactions,
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like digestion in the human body.
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Certain enzymes can fight germs by entering cells and breaking them apart from the inside.
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This can either kill bacteria or just slow them down enough that they probably won't make you sick.
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But to make those germs stopping enzymes from plants,
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you have to ferment the right mix of ingredients for just the right amount of time.
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Workers here stir the mixture every day.
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After about a month, it looks like this.
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It has a smell of smell.
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It's very sweet.
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By two months, this glob of bacteria and microorganisms forms.
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That's how you know it's working.
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The founders don't keep any of their process a secret.
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This is 10 parts of the water.
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10 parts of the water,
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1 part of the water,
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and 3 parts of the water.
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Huang says he learned this technique from Rochocon Pumpanbong.
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She's a scientist and Buddhist nun who figured out the formula,
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then shared it freely for others to use.
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After the mixture ferments for 3 months,
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there's enough acid and enzymes for it to work as a cleaner.
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Now it's ready to be filtered.
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The leftover solids become fertilizer for nearby farms.
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And the remaining liquid is the base for everything Fu Wah makes.
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Fu Wah buys those oils from local farmers,
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who make them using agricultural waste like stems and leaves.
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The final mixture is bottled and shipped to mini-marts around Vietnam,
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or to online customers in most countries.
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One bottle of dish soap sells for just over $2.
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Huang says that's less than the cost of similar imported products.
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Phu Hoa uses an on-site lab to test its products.
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And it looks at competitor stuff as well,
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measuring the pH and testing for other additives.
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Cleaning with fermented fruit is a fairly new concept,
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but there's evidence it has a lot of potential.
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Researchers compared a pineapple enzyme mixture to bleach and water and found it killed one type of bacteria equally well.
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And early research suggests fruit enzymes might even make wastewater cleaner.
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We know more about common chemical cleaners like bleach.
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They kill lots of germs,
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but come with other risks.
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Huang started making fruit cleaners when his wife,
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now the company's CEO, developed eczema.
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One reason is to use the cleaning products.
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Studies have linked cleaning products to skin irritation and breathing problems, including asthma.
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When used and stored properly,
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they're safe for most people.
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But mixing bleach with the wrong cleaners can create deadly gas,
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which happens thousands of times per year in the United States.
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So, could we one day replace household bleach and detergents with fermented pineapples?
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asked an expert.
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You'll be surprised.
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Yes, totally yes.
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But he also said we need more research.
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There's only a certain number of bacteria that has been tested,
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so probably got to do a wide range of studies with a wide range of microorganisms to ensure that it's really effective.
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Enzyme cleaners pose another challenge, shelf life.
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It will be one of the major issues.
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With certain temperature, it might be inactivated.
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Fuwa says its products can last about two years,
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which is about as long as most chemical cleaning sprays.
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Still, Fuwa has more work to do.
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With so much pineapple processing in the region,
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the company says it has lots of waste to work with.
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But mainly, the founders want people to know there's a gentler alternative.
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the ecosystem.
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So they're eager to spread the word.
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academic, and prosecuting, EYWLDOf ngày 12 and 8 November, 2020
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Why practice speaking with this video?
Engaging with the video "How People Profit Off Pineapple Scraps" offers a fantastic opportunity for English speaking practice. The content is rich and diverse, discussing innovative uses for pineapple byproducts in the fashion industry. This provides learners with a unique context that integrates sustainability and entrepreneurship, relevant topics in today’s world. Utilizing shadowspeak techniques, you can mirror the speaker’s intonation and rhythm, which aids in developing a more natural speaking style.
Additionally, incorporating this video into your IELTS speaking practice allows you to expand your vocabulary and explore various economic and environmental themes, both of which are frequently discussed in English-speaking contexts. By practicing with this video, you can enhance your listening comprehension and improve your speaking fluency on complex subjects.
Grammar & Expressions in Context
In the transcript, several key structures illustrate effective communication in English:
- Passive Voice: The speaker often uses passive constructions such as "Pineapples are grown on over 3,800 square miles." This structure emphasizes the process rather than the subject, allowing learners to understand how to use passive voice in their speaking.
- Conditional Statements: Phrases like "what if I make a mesh not unlike what leather is" exemplify conditional expressions that are essential for discussing hypothetical scenarios.
- Present Perfect Tense: The speaker says, "I have spent decades perfecting my process," showcasing how to talk about experiences that began in the past and continue into the present.
- Descriptive Language: Terms like "a convincing alternative" and "the queen of fibers" demonstrate the importance of using descriptive adjectives to enrich speech, making it more engaging.
Common Pronunciation Traps
While practicing with the video, learners may encounter certain words or phrases that can be challenging:
- Pineapple: This word can trip up speakers due to its syllable stress. Ensure to emphasize the first syllable: 'PIE-nap-ple.'
- Entrepreneurs: This term can be tricky due to its French origin. Focus on breaking it into syllables: 'on-tre-pre-NOOR.'
- Sustainability: A longer word that can be challenging. Practice saying it slowly at first: 'sus-tain-a-BIL-i-ty.'
Utilizing a shadowing app while listening and repeating these phrases can significantly help in mastering their pronunciation. Remember, the key to overcoming these challenges is consistent practice, so keep engaging with the content to elevate your English proficiency.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.
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