In Tumaco, two sisters cook future with shrimp shells

In Tumaco, Nariño, sisters Jaqueline and Yesi Sevillano found an opportunity in shrimp shells, which used to return to the sea as waste. Today they turn it into Camharina, a flour that fills the kitchens of Cali, Tumaco and Bogotá with the flavor of the Pacific, and transforms waste into an environmentally conscious future.

Daily, about 150 canoes arrive loaded with fresh shrimp at Tumaco’s fisheries. On land, the nimble hands of women peelers separate the edible part from the rough shell and head of the shrimp. On the table two piles are formed: on one side, the food consumed by hundreds of families; on the other, the waste that no one claims and that, added together, reach seven tons a month and return to the sea, not as food, but as the footprint left by this activity in the Colombian Pacific.