Entrepreneurship in Villages: Banana and pineapple wastes to value-added products

Consumer goods can be made from wastes as value-added products by using banana fibers and pineapple leaves.Since this is an entrepreneurship, there are also many challenges. However, it is a good business for people of all ages to work from home, especially women.

The raw materials from banana are useful in making many types of products, while only a few products can be made using the raw materials from pineapple.

Raw materials are mostly obtained from Taungoo, Yedashe, Thandaung, Kyaukse and so on.

Myint Thein, Founder, Thae Phyu Ecolodge said "We collect the banana barks from a banana tree naturally, put them in the machine to produce fibers, and use them. The same process goes for pineapples too. We rarely mix them with other materials. We can get value-added products by using the wastes as raw material. We have to cooperate with the farmers who have huge acres of banana (or) pineapple trees."

Though the business is beneficial for the socio-economic life of the local villagers as well as can create job opportunities, there are still challenges including technological issue, one of the business owners said.

Myint Thein, Founder, Thae Phyu Ecolodge said "Entrepreneurship has many challenges because people usually don’t want to do differently from their usual jobs. Since many people only want to do the jobs that can easily get them money, only a few would do entrepreneurship. Secondly, we have to copy the technology from other countries since we have many weaknesses in technological aspect. If we can formally learn those technologies from other countries, I believe the business can be carried out much faster. Since we don’t have time and money resources, we can only learn from the internet and other people who had learnt from the other countries. Therefore, we are facing many challenges."

The consumer goods produced from banana and pineapple are – slippers, bags, lamps, hats, threads, and clothes. Since the business pivots around a village, it helps to improve the job opportunities and socio-economic life of the local villagers.