ABOUT

Tapergy Has A Unique Mission: Quite simply we want to "save the world"

We believe that sustainable forests can help fuel the world while simultaneously helping local people in developing countries achieve a better life. We believe in zero waste, and that we can accomplish all of this through the production of innovative bio-fuels from the forest.

We can give forests with diverse plant life enormous value, through sustainably produced ethanol from sugar (meaning energy harvest from sunlight through natural photosynthesis) yet without the negative impacts of many of the presently well known bio-fuels. We can do this and provide more financial and environmental value than anyone could receive via deforestation to build plantations or the taking of trees for lumber.

We look for like-minded people who share our ethics and philosophy and want to participate in a grand scheme to restore nature, help local people and save the world's climate, while obtaining a very good return on their investment.

A Lifelong Quest

We cannot continue the way we are treating the earth, as if it were an infinite source to be mined rather than managed in a sustainable way. We cannot continue to rely upon fossil fuels to provide for our growing energy needs without causing the earth and ourselves permanent harm.

Dr. Willie Smits has been on a lifelong quest to bring about change, to save rainforests and the habitats of the wildlife who live there. He learned that the principles of "People, Profit, Planet" are not an empty slogan but the only way to achieve his goals.

In 2000 he started a project involving more than 6,000 sugar palm farmers in North Sulawesi, Indonesia through his Masarang Foundation and in 2001 another reforestation project in Samboja Lestari in East-Kalimantan through his Borneo Orangutan Survival Foundation involving thousands of local people as well.

With these two successful examples with millions of new trees planted, thousands of new jobs created and an explosion of returning wildlife in ecologically well-functioning new ecosystems, Smits was looking for a way to scale-up these examples.

Thirty years ago, when Willie married his Indonesian wife, the dowry was due in the form of six sugar palms. This set Willie on to a path of 30 years of research that has brought him to the moment he had been seeking. Through creating his patented "Village Hub," he has overcome any environmental risks of producing ethanol from the production of the sugar palm.

The combination of the technological breakthroughs, an academic approach to rigorous science and the involvment of local people has lead to the present opportunity -- bringing bio-diverse sugar palm forests to the world as a solution to the energy and environmental problems we all face.

Willie Smits speaks at ESRI conference (2009)-- watch video here.

Willie Smits presents the "code" for reforestation at the prestigious TED conference in California (2009)