SEOUL DESIGN AWARD

Mundau is a lagoon located in Vergel, a neighborhood in Maceió, Alagoas (a small state in northeastern Brazil). There are five slums on the shores of Mundau Lagoon in which thousands of people live in houses made out of canvas and cardboard amid extremely poor, unsanitary conditions. There are high incidences of malnutrition in children, drug trafficking, and child prostitution.

The only economic activity in these slums is the catching and selling of sururu, a type of mussel. Sururu fishing is done by many households in this area: in Vergel, 300 tons of shells are thrown away each month, causing serious environmental and public health problems (due to the abandonment of the shells because of the high clean-up cost). The sururu mussel was named as an intangible heritage of Alagoas State in 2014 for its important place in the food chain of this region.

The goal of the Sururu Da Mundau project is to increase the income of local residents by developing products using the 300 tons of shells that are discarded each month. The shells, which are finely ground by the residents, were mixed with sand and cement to make tiles in cooperation with a famous Brazilian ceramic tile manufacturer.

The project is expediting the social development of Vergel, which has been trapped in poverty. It began in 2019, when Maceió Mais Inclusive Através da Economia Circular, a BID LAB (an innovation laboratory of BID Group-Inter-American Development Bank) venture in partnership with the Brazilian Institute of Development and Sustainability (IABS), invited Rosenbaum and the A Gente Transforma Institute. They cooperated with Maceio’s City Hall and related venture firm networks to design and implement a project based on a virtuous economic cycle.