Recycling Soap, Saving Lives.

Samir Lakhani, 27, is a social entrepreneur dedicated to creating solutions that benefit people and the planet. Before Eco-Soap Bank, Samir was deeply involved in climate-resilient aquaculture and nutrition projects in northern Cambodian villages. He has also developed solar lighting enterprise projects in Cambodia, Bangladesh, and Nepal. Samir has received a CNN Heroes Award, Forbes 30 Under 30 Award, Rotary Presidential Peacebuilding Award, Johnson Institute for Responsible Leadership Award, Unilever Young Entrepreneurs Award, and others for his work with global hygiene. Samir works full time as Executive Director at Eco-Soap Bank. (LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samir-lakhani-usa)

We turn hotel trash into a lifesaving resource.

While families in the developing world still suffer from hygiene-related diseases, globally it’s estimated that hotels and factories discard 5 million bars of soap every single day.

Enter Eco-Soap Bank. We’re a global soap recycling organization employing disadvantaged women in 10 developing countries to collect leftover hotel soap, recycle it, and redistribute it to people in need.

This initiative makes powerful health, economic, and environmental impacts. We’ve provided soap and hygiene education to over 2.2 million people. We’ve created green jobs for 154 women. We’ve rescued over 227 metric tons of soap from being trucked to landfills. And we’re just getting started.

Eco-Soap Bank addresses three major problems facing the developing world:

1. Clean Water + Sanitation: Lack of access to affordable soap and low hygiene awareness cause high preventable disease, such as COVID19, and child death rates.

Handwashing is one of the most effective ways to prevent diseases like diarrhea—but according to the WHO, in some parts of the developing world, only 1% of households have access to soap. Since 1 in 9 child deaths are associated with diarrhea, hygiene interventions are imperative.

2. Gender Equality: Women lack reliable, fair-wage employment opportunities.

Stigma, gender bias, and child marriage adversely affect women’s ability to garner employment, support their families, and attain financial independence. 

3. Responsible Consumption + Production: The hotel industry needs responsible waste management solutions.

The average hotel generates an estimated 23,000 pounds of used soap, toiletries, and bed linens every year. These products are simply sent to landfills, contributing to CO2 release and environmental degradation. Soap factories generate on average up to 100 metric tons per year of entirely usable soap that can save lives. 

Our solution is to employ disadvantaged women to collect leftover soap, recycle and sterilize it, and distribute it in impoverished communities with hygiene education.

1. Providing recycled soap and hygiene education to adults and children in need. 

Recycling soap is cost-effective. Where clinics, schools, and individuals could not previously afford soap, we can provide it at half the market rate to millions of people per year. Since there is no prevailing culture of handwashing in many communities we serve, every distributed bar of soap is accompanied by hygiene education to ensure beneficiaries understand how proper hygiene prevents disease and helps families save money on healthcare.

2. Creating green jobs for women. 

We provide fair-wage employment to women who struggle to find reliable sources of income. Our female staff act as Soap Recyclers and Hygiene Educators. We also assist women in remote areas to start their own Eco-Soap-selling microenterprises, designed to help lift themselves out of poverty and sell soap at an affordable price.

3. Significantly reducing waste associated with the hotel and soap industry.

Recycling soap reduces waste and offsets CO2, offering hotels and factories a smart solution to their soap waste problem making them more sustainable or zero-waste manufacturers. 

We've helped 154 women improve their economic conditions—they’ve paid off debt and can now afford HIV medication, limb prosthetics, or custom glasses for visual impairments. Some, like Souey, have even saved their homes.

Soeuy's family had been living on the same land for generations. But then her two children fell sick with dengue fever. Fortunately, they recovered in a nearby hospital. But the medical bill was so high, Soeuy was faced with the impossible decision of whether to sell her land—her legacy—and lose everything. But then Soeuy enrolled in our program to recycle and sell soap. Villagers listened to her advocate for better hygiene and began buying her soap, one bar at a time. In six weeks, Soeuy had sold over 3,100 EcoSoap bars. She earned enough to pay off the debt completely—saving her home.

Additionally, our COVID19 impact has been rapid and far-reaching including: 

• Provided over 1.5 million bars of soap to 13 countries in Africa and Asia

• Provided soap to every single healthcare institution in Cambodia, Nepal, and Sierra Leone

• Provided recycled soap to the world’s largest refugee camps in Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Tanzania

• Provided over 500,000 bars of soap to African countries with one or no ventilators

In 2014, I was working on sustainable aquaculture projects in Northern Cambodian villages. During my time in the villages, I noticed that no one seemed in good overall health—whether it was an infection that wouldn’t go away or a child with diarrhea.

One day, I witnessed an event that still haunts me: a village mother bathing her newborn son, scrubbing his skin with harsh laundry power. The child was crying. When I asked if she had any bar soap to use, she told me all her family could afford was laundry powder.

Asking around the village, I encountered many other families who could only afford laundry powder and many more who had no soap at all, saying it was too expensive, a luxury. When I asked what they thought was causing their ill health, I found that many attributed disease to bad karma or punishment for sins in a past life.

When I returned to my hotel, I noticed my housekeepers had replaced a bar of soap I had barely used. This was my moment of inspiration. I knew if we could begin saving hotel soap, we could start saving lives.

My parents came from poverty as refugees from East Africa and always taught me the importance of working to lift families out of poverty, just as others had done for our family.

It may surprise people to know that common diarrhoea kills more people than AIDS, Malaria, and Measles combined.  

My singular mission in life is to turn that reality around globally throughout the developing world. However, the reason why this particular activity at Eco-Soap Bank is so innovative is because at every step we maximize our social and environmental impact. Every single aspect of the work has been meticulously crafted to be environmentally, socially, and economically impactful extending green jobs to women, reducing significant volumes of waste, and connecting children with soap, often for the first time ever. 

Lastly, in a country like Sierra Leone right now, there is only a single available ventilator in the entire country. Public Health is not accessible for much of the developing world, particularly rural communities. Physical distancing and soap are the answer to saving lives during the coronavirus. We can make a real, tangible, and lifesaving impact today. 

I believe there are two principal reasons why I’m best suited to execute this project:

1. I have spent the better part of the last 15 years working in the developing world and understand the risks and the benefits. Core to my philosophy is empowering local people to execute projects and remaining open to new interpretations and strategies. This is both a tactical and ethical way of completing work in the developing world which requires fast-thinking and immense level of problem solving often stemming from cultural aspects of the work. I deeply respect existing humanitarian leaders in the countries we work in, and seek to empower them with new innovations. 

2. I have a very strong pedigree and conviction towards a better environment. In addition to my degree in Environmental Sciences, since an early age, I’ve obsessed over sustainability projects and how we may integrate them into the consciousness and activities of developing countries. I have no appetite to execute short term humanitarian projects only. 

The combination of the above two aspects, in my opinion, make me applicable to execute these types of sustainability and humanitarian projects. This is further evidenced by our success with Eco-Soap Bank.

When the pandemic began, we had a serious problem on our hands: we had 154 women on payroll and no hotel soap to recycle during a pandemic when soap is lifesaving. 

We had to think fast—and differently. Instead of looking at the hotel industry as our primary raw supply chain, we decided to interview and talk to as many soap manufacturers as possible. 

What we found would forever change our organization—and for the better. 

We discovered that an average soap factory loses nearly 10% of their production as waste. In the last four months, we have moved over 100 metric tons of soap from factories to our soapmakers for recycling—the equivalent of twenty 40 foot shipping containers. 

We’re looking to scale this solution worldwide to prevent soap waste from entering landfills and to save lives. 

Before founding Eco-Soap Bank at 22, I started a solar lamp enterprise in South and Southeast Asia. After traveling extensively in the developing world, I’d realized many children’s study time was limited to daylight hours. Those without a reliable lighting source at home could not study after dark. Worse, those who studied by kerosene lamps risked inhaling dangerous fumes.

A clean, reliable lighting solution was needed. So I began working with local businesses and non-governmental organizations in Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Nepal to import and sell solar lamps to families at an affordable price. Families could purchase lamps outright or repay in intervals. By using solar lamps, families bought less kerosene and firewood and could use the money they saved to pay off the lamp.

In 2014, I started an aquaculture enterprise in Cambodia to address unpredictable trends affecting fishing villages as a result of climate change. Along with local officials, non-governmental organizations, and communities, we implemented a climate-resistant aquaculture system, providing employment to villagers and surplus fish protein during the dry season.

Both enterprises were successful and are currently being operated by local organizations and leaders whom I advise.

Currently - 2.25 million with soap and education

One Year - 5 million with soap and education

(We are mechanizing several of our operations in Q1 2021 to substantiate this figure.)

Five Years - 25 million with soap and education

(Given this timespan to establish relationships with hotels and manufacturers, we expect to reach this level of impact given the volumes of anticipated waste and the growing market and demand for affordable hygiene.)

Our model is focused on earned revenue: recurring revenue from hotels, factory, and NGO partners. 

We charge hotels and factories recurring subscriptions to collect and recycle their waste streams helping these entities save money on disposal costs and provide them with CSR/Marketing value. 

We also sell our recycled products at affordable rates, both locally to individuals and regionally to organizations. This creates economic opportunities in local communities while accomplishing large-scale health goals in tandem with governments. 

Our model is inherently lean and scalable, and it incorporates impact directly into our operations.

We vet and fund implementation partners in urban areas of developing countries. We work with them to source local women in need of employment, implement our recycling and education programs, and execute our distribution strategy. This approach allows for burden sharing as well as rapid, seamless integration with local cultures and practices.

We are looking for mentors who can help guide this vital project especially during a time where this project stands to be particularly lifesaving on a global scale. 

We apologize for the brevity of our application as we are working tirelessly on our global coronavirus response: https://ecosoapbank.org/covid19