Have you ever heard about Loofah before or know-how is this natural sponge is made?
Short story, loofah (teruwuk in the local language) is a type of plant in the cucumber family which is not only can be eaten but is also well known as a body scrubber in our local community. This plant is easily grown and only needs a few weeks for them to be fully ripe and dry.
The harvesting method is also very simple, only need to ripe the skin and get rid of the seeds inside the sponge. (Yes, the seeds can be randomly thrown to land and they will magically grow by themselves.
Then, why we brought this up?
As a group of people who want to live with low waste, we find that this natural sponge is one of the best alternatives and yet can be found easily in our surrounding. But our most people are used to with dish sponges made by factories (which definitely has microplastic inside).
Hygienically, a dish sponge is only recommended to be used for a maximum of 3 weeks by the fix body group.
While 1 dish sponge needs more than a year to decompose.
Thus, in June 2019, we have gathered around 30 local people in the village we assist. We explained the environmental benefit of Loofah and how to grow the plant at home sdairporttransport.com. Not only they can use them as individual usage (food or dishwashing sponge), but they start collecting and selling them to our production site which simply can add their daily income
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Gumi Bamboo is a Lombok based Social Enterprise working closely with women group (previously employed as stone miners) to produce earth friendly product sourcing bamboo materials from their Community Forestry, providing them leadership & life skill through Bamboo craftsmanship.
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Gumi Bamboo is a Social Business empowering women group ex stone miners in Lombok, Indonesia.
