Aveda works to empower indigenous peoples from Peru's Tambopata region by sourcing Peruvian Morikue for Aveda's Shampure and Firmata hair care products.
The journey to the Peruvian Amazon jungle begins on a small dugout boat in the town of Puerto Maldonado. The boat travels down the Tambopata River, treading through rich, muddy waters lined by tall grasses. Two hours later, the landscape begins to change and the warm fog of the rainforest wraps around the tops of trees. This is Eastern Peru's lush rainforest, located in the jungle of Vilcabamba, the "Sacred Valley." It is one of the "hot spots of biodiversity" on Earth, alive with Mother Nature's vast resources and painted with her wildest colors.
The Brazil Nut tree is one of the tallest and oldest trees in the Peruvian jungle, the Brazil Nut tree lives for 300 to 500 years, grows 150 feet high, and bears a trunk measuring more than 15 feet in diameter. Stoic and impressive, it is a testament to the beauty and resilience of the Amazon.
No one knows the rainforest and the Brazil Nut tree better than the local people of Tambopata. Families enter the jungle each year to gather Brazil Nuts, and leave the jungle each year with the economic resource that feeds their families. For a hundred years, they have single-handedly cleared the paths that run through the Amazon. Aveda walked this trail to the very source of the Brazil Nut, which is used to make a unique hair conditioning ingredient, a protein known as Aveda's morikue™.
Every year from January to March, the rivers of the Peruvian Amazon bustle with colorful boats transporting hundreds of Brazil Nut harvesters, locally known as "castaneros" to and from the forests. This is the rainy season, when the trees drop their heavy outer shells from the tops of their branches down into the moist, rich soil. During this time, families who live in the region travel into the jungle and spend several months living on government-granted concessions and collecting the nuts.
When nut-harvesters first arrive in the jungle, they suck the liquid from the bark of a local tree to prevent malaria contamination. The harvesters then clear a trail in the forest, which guides them in their quest for Brazil Nuts. Weaving through trees and wildlife, families gather the nuts from the ground and pile them together at clearings in the forest. The hard shells are then cracked open with a machete, revealing a collection of 15 to 18 small, brown nuts tightly packed together. The young men then carry 130-pound bags of Brazil Nuts on their backs to the edge of the river. Local dugout boats paddle down the muddy Tambopata River heavy with tons of nuts, and deliver them to a processing facility in Puerto Maldonado.
At the processing facility, the Brazil Nuts are dried, shelled and monitored for quality. Families are paid for their work based on the weight of good quality nuts they have gathered. When the nuts are pressed into oil, they also produce a byproduct known as meal, which is rich in protein. It is this meal that is transformed into a soluble protein called morikue™, used as a hair conditioning ingredient.
From the gathering of the nuts to the Morikue in Aveda's hair products, approximately 1,000 families of Brazil Nut collectors depend on the income from this harvest. The region's hard-working families are pivotal to the preservation of the rainforest and the continuation of their people's culture. Their work enables them stay on their homeland rather than migrate to larger cities, which in turn supports their communities and keeps their cultural traditions intact.
Today, the lush rainforest is in imminent danger of being destroyed. The region's soil and water is threatened by the contamination of mercury used for gold mining. Meanwhile, Peru has a strong market for timber, which brings loggers into the rainforest to cut down hardwood, including the Brazil Nut tree.
On its quest for sustainable natural ingredients, Aveda partnered with Conservation International (CI) in 1997. CI supports local communities and works with the Peruvian government to ensure that available land becomes government-granted concessions, which simultaneously creates a sustainable business for communities while protecting the rainforest from the loggers.
The benefits of Aveda's partnership with Conservation International and the people of Tambopata are threefold. Aveda and CI are working to strengthen existing local Brazil Nut businesses by creating a demand for raw materials and by providing added value to the processing of the nuts. Together, CI and Aveda are demonstrating that economic development and environmental conservation must be dealt with holistically. Aveda is also helping to protect a vast corridor of land in the rainforest, thus contributing to the lasting conservation of one of the world's richest ecosystems.
From the families who gather Brazil Nuts, the men maneuvering boats down the Tambopata River, the workers at the processing facility in Puerto Maldonado, to Conservation International and Aveda, every person is interconnected in the joint effort to conserve Peru's rainforest and support its local communities. On its journey into the Amazon, Aveda met every link who helps to make a sustainable business of Brazil Nuts while nurturing the ecosystem. If the people of Tambopata are the first link, the professionals and consumers in the Aveda network are the final links in this chain. Together, we are one.
