THE truck driver’s right foot eased on the accelerator, his left slowly pressing on the brakes as his gaze took in a young woman staring across the C-6 road in Taguig.
The woman’s smile blew out all the heat seeping into the cab. All vehicles followed the truck’s cue, not honking horns as Aya Fernandez crossed the road as if on a mission.
Indeed, for Fernandez, it was: to reach a nondescript one-story building where elements of water are turned into sources of fire: water lily into charcoal.
The building insulates Fernandez and three of her staff from the hustle and bustle of a busy thoroughfare. Fernandez blinks to let her eyes adjust as fluorescent lamps fail to mimic daylight. She beams as persons with disabilities (PWD), her employees, greet her.
Fernandez is now in her element.
Black gold
THE building houses Project Water Lily PH, which Fernandez formally launched two years ago.
“Our primary manpower is composed of PWDs who are well-trained [on] the charcoal briquetting technology,” Fernandez said.
Since its launch in 2016, Project Lily PH allowed Fernandez to sustain her advocacy for the environment while helping PWDs. It provides livelihood for PWDs through the production of environment-friendly charcoals, or eco-charcoals, made from water lily, coconut husk and other agricultural waste.
One of these PWDs is cancer survivor Relyn Nieva.
Nieva is already at the factory flicking the machines’ on switch even before the rest of the city has even rolled out of bed.
She hauls into an open area sacks of water lilies and coconut husks dried under the sun the day before. Nieva places these into round burners. A crushing machine pounds the charred remains into fine dark-gray powder.
She boils cornstarch in a mixer together with the powder. The mix is then poured into a mold.
By afternoon, rows of hundreds of fist-sized eco-charcoal briquettes are basking under the sun on top of steel tables.
Nieva and her two coworkers can produce seven to 10 trays every day. Each tray can hold up to 304 eco-charcoals.
Chances are
THE idea of Project Lily PH emerged from the fruits of a science high-school research project on fiberglass reinforcement.
Fernandez’s group chose to study water lilies, as the invasive plant has similar characteristics to industrial fiberglass. She, along with her group mates, sourced the water lilies from Laguna de Bay.
The research project marked the beginning of Fernandez’s interest in water lilies and creating livelihood projects out of them.
In the summer of 2015, the then-17-year-old Fernandez earned the title of Miss Teen Earth Philippines. She took the opportunity to begin the first-ever Project Lily, a bag-making livelihood project for the women of Barangay Rosario, Pasig.
Days later, Fernandez saw Nieva selling eco-charcoals outside Saint Ignatius De Loyola Parish. Nieva, now 45, and her colleagues, had been producing the charcoals since 2012 under a different group.
Impressed, Fernandez decided to use her social-media accounts to help market their eco-charcoal.
However, Nieva’s group stopped operating in 2016 due to internal problems. Fernandez, meanwhile, was nominated as one of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Youth Leaders. Upon learning what happened to Nieva’s group, she adopted the livelihood project.
Using the money she earned from hosting and modeling stints, she bought six new machines so that Nieva could continue production.
Biz lessons
FERNANDEZ describes her chance encounter with Nieva as “destiny,” as her family rarely attended Mass at that church. She also had no idea that the encounter would lead her to become the budding entrepreneur she is today.
“At that point, I wasn’t thinking ‘Okay, this is my business.’ I really wasn’t,” she said, referring to when she had bought them machines. In her mind, she was simply going to help them then eventually ask for the return of investment.
“I took the opportunity to make a proposal and make them [the PWDs] my beneficiaries,” she said. “My intention was just to bridge them to the right people and then fund them to reinforce their livelihood project.”
While forming the social enterprise, most of Fernandez’s challenges were rooted in her lack of knowledge in business. Soon, Google and books became her best friends.
She buried herself in reading and spent every hour, minute and second trying to improve her understanding of industrial manufacturing to better help the community.
On a more personal level, getting the right mindset was also a challenge for Fernandez. During times of doubt, she admitted blaming struggles on her age.
“I think the challenge [was] to not be ‘average,’” she said. “Being young is not an excuse: we have to make it an asset.”
The rest of her entrepreneurial journey sailed smoothly through the help of mentors, family and friends, according to her.
Renewed hope
IN a post on social media, Nieva’s coworker Temyong Rangel said it meant “a lot to work here in Project Lily because, first and foremost, I am able to help those in need and PWDs who are like me.”
Rangel, a former truck driver, is the team’s “master of production” as he heads all the necessary processes in the production of eco-charcoal.
Rangel lost his left leg in a brutal car collision when he was still young. But together with his amputated body part was a broken heart: his fiancée left him due to his physical incapability to work.
He said he felt useless and a burden to his loved ones, prompting him to consider slashing his wrists.
Project Lily PH gave Rangel a spark of hope.
“Despite our physical handicaps and our disadvantage, we’re able to make this high-caliber charcoal,” he said, clutching crutches on one hand and a pack of eco-charcoal in another.
However, Fernandez said she doesn’t want to highlight the fact Project Lily PH is composed of PWDs.
“It’s more about being proud of what we have, the quality product, the innovation and it’s made proudly by the PWDs,” she said.
Fernandez believes the project empowers the community and makes workers proud of what they do.
“[They] do something that has a very big impact on society and it is not true that [they] do less,” Fernandez said. “In fact, [they] do more.”
Blooming advocacy
ACCORDING to a Department of Science and Technology product test, eco-charcoals have an ability to produce less smoke, a low clean flame and twice the heat of regular charcoals. The product is also easy to ignite and lasts up to one hour with constant heat.
Project Lily PH sells each eco-charcoal between P30 and P40 per kilogram.
Fernandez said their product can last to cook more than one meal.
Six pieces of eco-charcoal, equivalent to P10 worth a plastic of regular charcoal, greatly outweighs in terms of economic and environmental benefits, Nieva added.
They said every ton of eco-charcoal produced also saves 88 trees.
Project Lily PH currently supplies five barbecue-grilling restaurants with eco-charcoal. The team, awarded the Most Promising Youth Enterprise 2017 by the Villar Sipag Foundation Inc., is about to finish the reconstruction of their factory.
They are also currently reaching out to other grilling restaurants, their main market, looking for “Eco-Partners” to help sustain their livelihood. They are partnering with the major franchiser of a Korean barbecue restaurant in the Philippines.
Fernandez said they are working on purchasing new machines for expansion. She also plans to transform the project into a corporation so they can go into mass production.
Fernandez added she also plans to hire more PWDs, most of whom are friends of the current staff.
“In the long run, I want Project Lily PH to become the leading manufacturer of eco-friendly charcoals in the country,” she said.
“We envision having no trees cut to produce charcoal. We have a serious global and environmental crisis and we are being affected by it,” Fernandez said. “Project Lily is also an awareness that it is happening and we have to do something about it.”
From pesky water lilies come eco-charcoals—an opportunity to save the environment and change lives.
1 comment
Hi I jackyline from Angeles city Pampanga and I am interested for this Charcoal product.. can I have your contact details? My number is 09205851500 . Thank you