From Solar Africa, I learned of the Global Soap Project:
He arrived in the U.S. from Africa 15 years ago and was staying at a hotel in Philadelphia, when he noticed that the cleaning crew would replace the bathroom soap each day, even if the bars were only slightly used.The 'he' in question, Ugandan Derreck Kayongo, thought of of a use for all the discarded soap:
Mr. Kayongo, a field coordinator for Atlanta-based relief agency CARE International, this year launched an effort to collect used bars of hotel soap and recycle them for use in refugee camps in Uganda. He sees it as a way to fight the spread of disease and allow U.S. hotels to help Africa while also reducing the amount of trash they are paying to have hauled away to landfills.Kayongo plans to recycle the soap using hired labour Uganda. Those whole venture is innovative, but I can't help but wonder, even if the soap is free, is shipping discarded soap from the US really cost-effective, given that there are plenty of domestic producers? Why not take the amount of money being used for lugging tons of soap across the Atlantic and just use it to buy soap locally?
1 Comment
Amen to that! I think this is a major problem with aid... the thinking that Africa doesn't have it's own solutions.
I am also a little disappointed that Kayongo, as a member of the Ugandan Diaspora doesn't realize that we have a thriving indigenous soap industry with Mukwano and Unilever being the big hitters in this arena.
A better initiative in this case would be to convince to the hotels to source their soaps from Uganda, thus hiring loads more people, which in turn creates a local income generating sub-sector which is better able to buy soap and become a lot healthier. there's a direct corollary between wealth and hygiene.
If people just started to think smarter about helping Africa, we'd all be better off!