Buttons May Help Save Rain Forests

A natural button that the U.S. garment industry discarded for plastic ones in the 1940s is being re-employed by Patagonia Inc. as part of a campaign to save Ecuadorean rain forests.

Under an agreement with Conservation International, Patagonia will buy an estimated 4 million ivory-like buttons a year. They are made from the fruit of the tagua palm harvested by residents of Comuna Rio Santiago in northwestern Ecuador and will be finished in Italy.

“Giving money to causes is easy, nothing more than writing a check,” Patagonia spokesman Kevin Sweeney said. “Changing the nature of the products you use is a lot tougher challenge.”

Patagonia and Smith and Hawken, a Mill Valley garden products and clothing manufacturer in Northern California, signed licensing agreements with Conservation International, a Washington-based environmental group. Smith and Hawken, like Patagonia, donates 10% of its pretax profits to environmental causes.

By harvesting the chestnut-like fruit of the tagua palm, villagers living on the western slopes of the Andes will be relieved of the economic pressure to clear the forests for agriculture, said Mark Plotkin, vice president of Conservation International. The group is trying to save a 245,000-acre area in Ecuador’s Esmeraldas province.

Tagua buttons, which can be dyed or used in their natural off-white color, accounted for 20% of the American market before plastic buttons, Plotkin said. They are still used on high-fashion garments in Japan and Italy.