[Brand Story #3] Ririren - Upcycling from Pear Branch

Founded in Taichung in 2016, by two young people, Ririren Rural Company Limited (梨理人農村有限公司) started to take action after seeing large amounts of surplus fruits being produced in rural village in Houli, Taichung after the harvest. Therefore, it started with the high-altitude grafted pear from Houli and began addressing the traditional problems of agricultural burning, as well as stacking surplus in order to establish a sustainable and circular agriculture model.

As a sort of treasure island, Taiwan can produce tropical, subtropical, and temperate fruits. Overall, more than 30 kinds of fruits can be economically cultivated but a considerable amount of pruning and remaining materials are also produced from fruit trees. In Taiwan, more than 100,000 tons of materials that are not properly used in circulation every year which impacts and burdens rural communities and the environment.

The Ririren believe in "circulation and innovation" and seek ways to comprehensively use fruit trees with the hope of deepening the concept of circular sustainability in rural Taiwan while integrating more deliberate design and commercial possibilities. As a result, farmers have been provided with other resource utilization measures besides burning and discarding, thus changing farmers’ surplus operation model.

Brand name : 梨煙 (Pear Smoke) 

"Pear smoke, free the countryside from hazardous smoke"

After the harvest, high-altitude grafted pears fill baskets, and mountains of paper bags are mixed with pear stems, tape, and plastic coated wire. All of
these accessories are used in the process of growing high-altitude grafted pears, from grafting to flowering and harvesting. Once these accessories are
separated from the pears, they lose their function and are burned or discarded by the orchards, which is the origin of the brand name of pear smoke. 

The brand name of pear smoke was initiated from using these surplus resources to create value through the perspective of sustainability for deliberation in order to revolutionize their fate. Therefore, we encourage farmers to classify themselves on their own and join the centralized clearing, and we then buy the properly sorted pear stems from the farmers. After carrying out drying, anti-corrosion, and other treatments, we hand these stems over to the community craft class that we trained for handicraft production.

The pear-smoke series products are characterized by preserved grafted wart, so that each product has its own unique story. Furthermore, the production is not at all sloppy from raw material processing and woodworking to fine manual grinding and maintenance by waxing. As a result, every product is not only special with its shape, but is also a product of excellent quality.

Please see their video (in Mandarin)