Making love might not seem like the most obvious way to save the world's largest tropical rainforest - and combat the threat of Aids. But according to the Brazilian government, which this week opened a $20m con dom factory deep in the Amazon jungle, it could be an effective weapon in the battle to silence the chainsaws of Amazonia. On Monday government ministers gathered in the remote town of Xapuri to open a condom factory that will use latex manually extracted from the area's forests to make around 100 million condoms a year. The factory in the Amazon state of Acre would allow local rubber tappers to profit from the rainforest without destroying it, officials said.
Environment minister Marina Silva said the Natex condom would help create "a new pattern of production and a new process of inclusion that would value the forest being left standing".
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