Eco-Soap Bank: Hotel Soap Scraps Become Hygiene Kits and Women's Jobs

Eco-Soap Bank collects the partially used soap bars hotels throw away every day, then trains and employs local women to sanitize, shred and reprocess them into new bars — recovering a product that soap factories alone dump at a rate of roughly 25,000 tonnes a year worldwide. Founded in 2014, the organization now runs recycling hubs in five countries, including Cambodia, Nepal, Tanzania, South Africa and Sierra Leone, employing more than 175 women in soap production. To date it has recycled over 17 million pounds of used soap and distributed more than 81 million bars, reaching over 12 million people with soap and hygiene education across more than 40 countries.