Green Banana Paper is a manufacturing company recycling post-harvest banana trees into plant-based products including wallets, business cards and paper, in Kosrae, Micronesia.
A social enterprise founded by Matt Simpson in 2014, Green Banana Paper emerged from Matt’s love of Kosrae.
“I came to Kosrae in 2008 as a high school teacher with the WorldTeach program and loved the Kosraean people and the island lifestyle. At the same time I also noticed that there were hardly any businesses, job opportunities and even fewer export products. Many of my former students were unemployed or in the US working for minimum wage. Here in Kosrae I saw a natural resource that we could recycle and transform into a beautiful product. Green Banana Paper recycles banana tree stems that would otherwise rot, while simultaneously employing locals who would otherwise struggle to find work.
“We began our initial building phase of our open-air eco-factory in May of 2014. We equipped it with custom-fabricated machinery in order to stay agile and rapidly innovate new prototypes. We then spent three years experimenting and fine-tuning the technique of producing handmade paper with the natural fibres and tropical climate in Kosrae.”
As Matt and the Green Banana Paper team perfected their offering, they needed a platform to raise awareness of their products and mission so they could expand. Kickstarter, an online crowdfunding platform, was the perfect choice.
“Kickstarter was an excellent tool for us as a grassroots company and we couldn’t have asked for a better welcoming from the world. We raised well over twice our financial goal, which enabled us to expand our team of artisans and invest in new equipment to expand our production abilities.
“We are thankful to PTI Australia for getting behind our Kickstarter campaign and running a social media campaign to promote it. Kosrae is a remote part of the world; many don’t know that our island exists and having organisations like PTI Australia promoting us to their networks, helped to raise our profile out in the market enabling us to exceed our goals. It’s enabled us to increase our team by nine people and it continues to grow. We just received our ‘Monster’ beater and over 100 new screens to double our papermaking capacity. We have also been able to do significant factory upgrades and renovations to maximise our space and resources.”
Green Banana Paper is a true ‘waste-to-wealth’ community business. With 27 employees, they have grown to be one of the top three private sector employers on the island. Green Banana Paper also works with over 100 farmers who collect extra income for their families by selling their unwanted banana stems in a natural ‘waste-to-wealth’ cycle.
