Dole Sunshine, a name used to represent the global interests and combined efforts of Dole Asia Holdings, Dole Worldwide Packaged Foods, and Dole Asia Fresh, has entered into a partnership with Ananas Anam, the London-based company behind Piñatex, an innovative, vegan, and natural alternative to leather made from sustainably sourced pineapple leaf fibers. Through the partnership, Ananas Anam's Piñatex is made of fiber extracted from Dole’s harvested pineapple plant leaves, which when dried and processed, create a non-woven mesh to form the base of the sustainable material. The use of the pineapple leaf fiber also presents the opportunity to build a scalable commercial industry for developing farming communities and livelihood improvement for small-scale cooperatives/growers.
Through the collection and extraction of fiber from pineapple leaves from its farms in Philippines, one of the largest pineapple plantations in the world, Dole is not only taking another step toward its promise of zero fruit loss by 2025, but also contributing to a world where sustainable material alternatives are becoming increasingly important as global lifestyle brands look for these alternatives for their products.
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Dole, which launched its six-prong promise in June 2020, is committed to making an immediate and lasting impact when it comes to food waste, eliminating processed sugar and plastics, and improving nutrition access globally. In addition to its partnership with Ananas Anam, Dole is working toward a more circular economy and finding new packaging solutions for its products to reduce not only food waste, but plastics overall.
“At Dole, we believe purpose—and therefore our promise—must permeate everything we do to address these global challenges head on. Addressing food waste is absolutely important to us, as it is connected to our business and our lives in so many ways," says Pier-Luigi Sigismondi, global president, Dole Sunshine Company. “I believe to create tangible solutions and real systemic change to address this issue, we need to converge our purpose with creativity, innovation, and technology. Our partnership with Ananas Anam coupled with global lifestyle brands’ use of this innovation truly bring this convergence to life in a new way.”
