Manfaatkan Limbah Sabut Kelapa Menjadi O Coco
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The Gunung Kukusan village in Kokap sub-district of Kulon Progo regency has abundant natural supplies of coconut trees. Human resource, however, is still lacking in this area, making the coconut still underused, which includes the coconut fibres.
This fact prompted a number of Engineering students of UGM, namely Yofrizal Alfi, Fikri Muhammad, Yulisyah Putri Daulay, Putu Sri Ronita Dewi, and Verna Ardhi Hafsari to provide technology guidance to the local people to make use of the coconut fibre. They train them to make the fibre into coco fibre that has economic value. This programme has received grants from the Higher Learning Directorate and been presented in the International Conference on Community Service from 8-10 April 2016.
Fikri mentioned there were 160 families in Gunung Kukusan, each having between 14-40 coconut trees. “Coconut fibre is abound here, but the remainder is only heaped up, turning into waste. Currently, no one has made it more valuable economically,” said Fikri on Monday (11/4) at Faculty of Engineering UGM.
The five students took the initiative to work with the local people of Gunung Kukusan to use and develop the fibre. The people enthusiastically welcomed the programme.
Starting in March 2016, the students trained the people to process coconut into fibre as pillow filler, in addition to marketing training.
“The product that they made take the form of pillow and bolster, which we named as O Coco, the cover using Indonesian theme,” he said.
Fikri explained that to get good coconut fibre, they need to soak up the fibre for three days. Then, the fine threads have to be separated from the fibres during destruction of fibres. After the coco fibre is obtained, aroma therapy such as cinnamon and clove is added; then these are dried up.
After processing, the coco fibre pillow will have higher economic value. One pillow sells between Rp30 - Rp40 thousands based on size. “For the time being, we do the marketing of coco fibre through social media and expo,” he said.
Through the Student Creativity Programme – Community Service, Fikri hoped to be able to increase productivity and prosperity of the local people of Gunung Kukusan, as well as to generate a coconut fibre processing centre that is known widely.