For People & Planet in Brazil
By purchasing an item made in Brazil, you are helping three times people & planet:
1. By empowering and subsidizing little artisans who make products on a small scale.
Brazil is a country with a rich cultural heritage. Our handicraft is one of the richest in the world and guarantees the livelihood of many families and communities. There are thousands of little artisans that love their work and make it with pleasure. So, if we have the chance to choose products made with passion by artisans fairly paid, why not?
Brazil is the 4th biggest cotton producer and one of the top 10 steel globally producers. For now, you can find some products made with these two materials on our shop.
2. By supporting "Brasil sem Frestas" (Brazil without cracks), an amazing association run by volunteers in south Brazil. They reuse the Tetra Pack to isolate the houses of low-income families from cold, heat, and rain. Part of our profit goes to them.
This association was founded in September 2009 in Passo Fundo, south of Brazil, by the chemist Maria Luisa Camozzato. In Passo Fundo, as in several other cities in Brazil, thousands of low-income families live in simple houses with no isolation. Their health and comfort are threatened by high humidity, cold, and heat during the entire year - the temperatures go from 0°C up to 40°C. Maria Luisa found the solution: aware of the thermal insulating property of Tetra Pak packages, she decided to use that to improve the living conditions of people whose homes are lined with cracks and holes. Brasil sem Frestas carries out the work, making and applying the thermal plates from milk cartons with three objectives: improving people's health, removing a highly durable product from the environment, and carrying out direct recycling.
This project is expanding throughout Brazil, and it is currently present in more than 40 cities. In the first city, Passo Fundo, the project already gave a new use to 20 tons of Tetra Pack (until 2019).
You can learn more about this initiative by watching this video (sorry, it is only in Portuguese).
3. By offsetting the shipping: we are donating part of our profit to plant trees in Amazon Forest, aiming to support the reforestation of this place, which plays a critical role in regulating the global climate.
As Brazil is not around the corner, we have decided to offset these products' shipping. Being the world's largest rainforest ecosystem, we all know that Amazon is suffering more and more from deforestation every year as a consequence of logging, unsustainable agriculture, and forest fires. 80% of deforested areas in the Amazon forest are occupied by livestock. There are two main ways to help with this situation: avoid buying/eating meat originated from these lands and plant trees. Planting trees in the Amazon Rainforest will help conserve its iconic wildlife species, providing sustainable livelihoods to local people, and stabilizing the climate.
You can find Beewise's products made in Brazil here!
FAQ
Why are you selling Brazilian products?
I’m Brazilian, and I would love to share with you the wide variety of natural resources we have in Brazil through Beewise. Plus, I met a few people with excellent hand skills who would love to provide their products made with passion to people abroad.
But Brazil is far from the Netherlands. Why buying products made so far away?
In the last period, I have researched a lot for sustainable products. It is not easy to find products and materials made in Europe. And sometimes, when you search deeper, the glass container, the metal lid, the cotton fabric, the bamboo stick, etc., are made outside Europe (mainly China and India for cotton products). Many products are then assembled (or only designed) in Europe, but the material or primary production is outside the region (again, mainly in Asia). So, most of the products we buy and use in Europe are actually made far from here. Plus, most of the time is not possible to track 100% of the origin of the resources and the work conditions of the products made in these countries.
On the other hand, Brazil has many resources that we use in sustainable/reusable products like cotton, bamboo, sugar cane, steel, wood, and paper. And quite a lot of small artisans willing to work in a transparent way with a smile on their face (and heart). However, the country doesn't have all the machinery that we could find, for example, in Asia. Consequently, it is not possible to find an alternative to every product that I wish to.
On my last trip to Brazil, I'm glad that I found a great community of people willing to produce sustainable products. You will see on our page a few eco products made in Brazil, and there is more to come. Stay tuned!
If you have any suggestions or doubts, feel free to contact me.
Um abraço,
Carina