Campaign for jute

Press, 13 August 1980, Page 24

Campaign for jute

A campaign promoting the use of jute products has been launched in New Zealand. Trade Aid, which imports items from developing countries, hopes to make people aware that Bangladesh is economically dependent on jute to approximately the same extent that New Zealand is on its agricultural produce according to a, Christchurch Trade Aid staff member, Mr Kevin O’Conner. He said that Trade Aid also wanted people to realise

that jute was much kinder ' i to the environment than oilbased plastics, which had largely taken its market. Jute represented 85 per cent of Bangladesh’s income, and competition from plas- : : tics was a threat, Mr O’Conner said. Plastics gained a world market • in the early 19705, when Bangladesh fought its war for : .independence with Pakistan. . 1 The fight to recover lost (markets had been hampered by severe' floods, and reliance on foreign shipping . lines to carry goods. Mr O’Conner said that 1

Trade Aid hoped, by marketing jute handcrafts, to show the benefits agricultural producers such as New Zealand and Bangladesh could gain by processing their produce into finished articles. More than 50 per cent of Bangladesh’s jute is exported in its raw state and it earns $360 a tonne. A typical shipment of jute handcrafts earns more than $52,000 a tonne. “Bangladesh can increase its income 15 times, by exporting finished articles,” Mr O’Conner said.