Recycling hotel soap to save lives.
Derreck Kayongo and his Atlanta-based Global Soap Project collect used hotel soap from across the United States. Instead of ending up in landfills, the soaps are cleaned and reprocessed for shipment to impoverished nations such as Haiti, Uganda, Kenya and Swaziland.
“I was shocked just to know how much (soap) at the end of the day was thrown away,” Kayongo said. Each year, hundreds of millions of soap bars are discarded in North America alone. “Are we really throwing away that much soap at the expense of other people who don’t have anything? It just doesn’t sound right.”
“The issue is not the availability of soap. The issue is cost,” Kayongo said. “Make $1 a day, and soap costs 25 cents. I’m not a good mathematician, but I’m telling you I’m not going to spend that 25 cents on a bar of soap. I’m going to buy sugar. I’m going to buy medicine. I’m going to do all the things I think are keeping me alive.”
To date, the Global Soap Project has provided more than 100,000 bars of soap for communities in nine countries.
“When we were distributing the soap, I could sense that there was a lot of excitement, joy, a lot of happiness,” said Kayongo, whose work was recently recognized by the Atlanta City Council, which declared May 15 as Global Soap Project Day in Atlanta.
“It’s a reminder again of that sense of decency. They have (someone) who knows about their situation, and is willing to come and visit them … to come and say, ‘We are sorry … We’re here to help.’ “
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