A Social Project is saving thousands of trees on the Amazon Forest, delivering and effective all natural personal care product to the market while aiding people with scarce resources.
(1888PressRelease) July 12, 2008 - What do you do when you believe there is a better way to bring the essence of nature to the market, a way to get the real thing instead of adulterated products, a way to avoid the middleman’s exorbitant prices and a way to put all this together in a manner that every one can benefit from it: from the Amazon rural communities to the final consumer who is concerned with his own health not to mention the planet’s wholeness?
If you are Arnoldo Luchtenberg and you live in Belém do Pará, in the Brazilian Amazon, you get yourself inside the jungle to get your own sources. And that’s what this man from Santa Catarina, a state on the South of Brazil, an expert in computers converted into a true adventurous nordestino (a northeastern man) did.
He first visited Belém in 1995 when establishing a Web presence for a company that sold Amazon oils to the pharmaceutical industry. It was love at first sight. When the company he was working for closed the doors he saw the opportunity to create his own line of natural products. This would allow him to make a living while being able to continue living by the forest he had now learned to love.
He packed his bags and moved to the city by the mighty Amazon River mouth and started his own natural products business. And never had any regret.
In 1997 Luchtenberg hired a chemist with expertise in Amazonian botanicals and created a company called Naturais da Amazônia. Combining his expertise in E-commerce with his new-found love of everything natural he started selling his products. It wouldn’t take long – really less than eight months – before Europe would discover and fall in love with his products, made the way Amazonian people have been making by generations: all natural, no added chemicals, with 100% concentration.
The smooth sailing of the company ended when the world discovered Açaí, that little berry packed with anti-oxidants and vitamins, which has been used for centuries as a staple food by the Amazonian people. The high demand for the berries in Europe and the US introduced a new character in this market: the middleman. It also put pressure on the small farmers to cut other tree species to favor the growth of Açaí palm. This change made the small producers more dependent on the middleman; and for people like Luchtenberg, who could not meet the growing demand for his products it meant fewer raw materials he could count on. Now the raw material was often adulterated, was taking too long to be delivered, and prices were exorbitant.
That’s when he decided to get himself inside the forest in search of a solution.
His incursion into the jungle brought him many surprises and a few heartaches. Luchtenberg found, for example, farmers cutting some species of palm trees source of his raw material, so they would have more land to grow the Açaí palm.
He started organizing the grassroots, going from house to house, small farmer to small farmer, making them aware that Açaí wasn’t the only game in town. They could also make money selling murumuru, pracaxi, andiroba, bacuri, all seeds that can made into butter and oil without having to cut the forest down.
There were still some problems, however. For one, there was no equipment to extract the oil from the seeds; moreover the people in the forest had no training on how to use even the simplest of the extracting machines. Luchtenberg partnered with a company that made the equipment and brought the machines to improvised warehouses built inside the jungle. He also gave them training and promised to buy all they were able to produce. It was born the project Each Drop Saves a Tree.
It didn’t take long before international organizations for environmental protection like DED (Deutsche Entwicklungsdienst - German Development Service) and GTZ (German Organisation for Technical Cooperation) and Sagri (Pará state Agriculture Secretariat) recognized the importance of the project and joined in giving technical and financial support.
In 2004, an American company called Amazon Drops, which has in the business of natural products 2001, was looking to associate itself to a Brazilian company with a strong social and environmental commitment, found the Naturais da Amazônia project. To Amazon Drops CEO, Brazilian born Lêda Bittencourt, the find was a perfect fit:
“It’s always been my dream to partner with a company that has social and environmental concerns and be able to bring a unique product to the consumer as well. Naturais da Amazônia project has them all: helping preserve the Amazon forest for the world, bringing a unique, wonderful product to the market while aiding people with scarce resources.
It was in 2005 that Amazon Drops joined forces with Naturais da Amazônia to bring the products to the North American market, comprising the United States, Canada and Mexico. “We all believe that the only way for the project to survive is to find overseas’ market for the products whose raw material is supplied by the communities living and working inside the Amazon jungle,” Bittencourt says.
Since 2006, all products hold an organic-certified and social seals granted by IBD, a Brazilian organic certifier organization accredited by IFOAM (International Foundation for Organic Agriculture) and USDA –Organic, the US authority on organics. Today the company has a line of 32 skin and hair care products which are sold in Spain, France, United Kingdom and Australia. The products will be officially introduced to the American market during the 2008 Natural Market Place trade show in Las Vegas-NV in July 18th-19th 2008.
The Each Drop Saves a Tree project nowadays has grown to include around 60 communities, totalizing around 3,500 people who benefit directly from it. Add to this the preservation of thousands of trees, and a excellent and effective all natural personal care product delivered to a demanding consumer interested in a healthier way of living while preserving the planet’s environment, and you will have a combination so unique that it literally stands in a class of its own.
Form more information visit: www.amazondrops.com
A Social Project is saving thousands of trees on the Amazon Forest, delivering and effective all natural personal care product to the market while aiding people with scarce resources. 
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