In March 2019, recognising an imminent environmental catastrophe, the UN Environment Assembly encouraged member states to identify and promote environmentally friendly alternatives to single-use plastics, including disposable nappies. Meanwhile here in the pineapple capital, Bathurst, Candy Androuliakos was already hard at work developing a line of products under what would become the Leafline brand. She spoke about her ground-breaking work at the Bathurst Pineapple Festival recently.
Androuliakos’s award-winning journey started with an expensive problem to solve that coincided with a visit to Bathurst’s Big Pineapple.
“My sister in Gauteng who ran a retirement home. In 2017, they were spending R7000 a month for the nappies and their disposal at the landfill: a bakkie-full of disposable adult diapers would leave the home daily.”
If the widely quoted prediction that one disposable nappy took 500-800 years to disintegrate is correct, it’s a disaster.
Single-use plastic swamps landfills and waterways across the globe. Plastic doesn’t biodegrade, but breaks up into tiny pieces (microplastics). Scientists have warned that microplastics have been found in almost every natural habitat on earth, and have returned to the food chain via organisms and animals. Single-use nappies, researchers say, are one of the biggest contributors to plastic waste.
A 2021 report by the United Nations Environment Programme-hosted Life Cycle Initiative (/https://www.lifecycleinitiative.org) said that in the European Union alone, around 33 billion single-use nappies were consumed a year. This resulted in 6.7 million tonnes of waste a year – and that’s just in the EU.
Androuliakos, who trained and worked as a beauty therapist, is a problem solver and she started experimenting with patterns and attractive fabrics for rewashable pants that could save money… and the world.
“Once I’d got the design right, my challenge was to find a material for the inner that was absorbent.”
That quest concided with a visit to the Big Pineapple in Bathurst, where there was an explanation of growing and processing.
Candy wondered what happened to all the leaves stripped off the pineapples, asked around, and soon had a 10kg bag of pineapple leaf fibre to experiment with.
“IN 2017 I experimented with putting the fibre into various designs. I tested them until I found a method that worked.”
Enter a catalyst in the form of the Innovation Hub. Winning their competition enabled her to start manufacturing a product in earnest.
She outsourced manufacturing of the inners to an orgnisation employing disabled people.
By mid-2021, Androuliakos herself employed nine people fullime, including people with disabilities. An award from the SAB Foundation Social Innovation and Disability Empowerment Awards boosted the project and in December 2024, Leafline started manufacturing their own pineapple fibre.
Today the Leafline range includes reusable nappies for babies, incontinence care solutions and feminine hygiene products.
The latter has become an important focus and SPAR an important partner. The retailer buys Leafline products to stock in their stores, but also as part of their corporate social investment (CSI) mandate. Sanitary towels are provided to girls in need at schools.
Androuliakos’s talk was part of the programme at the recent Pineapple Music Festival in Bathurst. The event, set to become an annual was a platform for local artists to showcase their talent, as well as popular acts from out of town. A traders’ market and children’s activities were also part of the festivities, hosted at Summerhill Inn. It’s organised by the Bathurst Residents and Ratepayers Association.
Visit leafline.co.za for more information about Androuliakos’s work.
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This article was first published in Talk of the Town, March 20, 2025. The newspaper serving the communities of Ndlambe and the Sunshine Coast, with a weekly wrap of Makhanda news, is available at stores from early on Thursdays.
