Have you ever seen fish leather? You can find the beautiful (if weird) material in fancy New York bags and Texas cowboy boots.

Its source? Our big fish friend, the pirarucu.

In the Amazon, people eat pirarucu skin and all. But many of the fish go to big slaughterhouses. There, the fish skins get thrown away.

At least, they used to. Now a company called Nova Kaeru puts that skin to good use. The company will process about 50,000 pirarucu skins this year.

The company started with toad farmer Eduardo Filgueiras. He raised the amphibians for meat. But he also noticed: Toads have beautiful skin. The skin was being thrown out. He decided to try to use it. He took a leather working course and started experimenting.

Mr. Filgueiras transformed the skin into leather. But there was a problem: The skin was too small. He invented a way to weld several pieces together.

A few years later, he started the Nova Kaeru tannery. (A tannery is a place where leather is made.) He crafted leather from salmon and ostrich. One day, a businessman knocked on the door with a stack of pirarucu skins.

Mr. Filgueiras found he could fix the many holes in the pirarucu leather using the same technique he used for the toad leather.

His company got more skin from the Amazon fishery. Each skin sells for $37. The money helps pay the fisherfolk. All this from something that almost got pitched into the trash!

And when they had eaten their fill, He told His disciples, “Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost.” — John 6:12