Fish-leather and fish-skin products from the waste of the processing plants

A first step

Collect fish skins from one processing plant, asking what they do with them now, and have a small batch tanned by a leather worker willing to try. Make three simple items, a wallet, a card holder and a strap, and show them in person to a boutique buyer in a tourist town and by photograph to a design shop abroad. A price offer or an order for a small batch is the proof.

Who pays first

A boutique or design shop that sells unusual leather goods and will pay for a story of material rescued from waste.

What leaves today

Fish skin from the processing plants is thrown away, when tanned it becomes a leather that sells at a premium.

The idea and the mechanism are from the book. The first step was written for this site as a suggestion; if you know a better one, say so.

The test

Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?

The only test any idea on this site has to pass. The four rules that go with it are here.

In the book

• Ch. TwoAn Island Nobody Has Counted
  An ocean eight times the size of the land

More from cluster 13

• 251Sailing charters and a yacht marina at Galle or Trincomalee, with the crew trained here
• 252Diving schools at the wrecks of Trincomalee and the reefs of the east, certified to international standard
• 253Sport fishing charters with catch-and-release, sold to the Gulf and Europe
• 254Sea-cucumber and seaweed farming in the northern lagoons, which Japan and Korea buy
• 255Tuna graded, loined and vacuum-packed at the harbour for the sashimi market, not sold whole
• 256Crab and prawn from the lagoons as a branded chilled export, with the lagoon's name

All 20 ideas in this cluster