Atlanta, 09.17.2009.
From Atlanta Hotels, Tons of Soap Heading for Africa
By David Beasley
Derreck Kayongo 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.
“I called my Dad back home and told him, ‘You wouldn’t believe what happens here. They throw away soap that is used only once,’” said Mr. Kayongo.
His father, a former soap maker in Uganda, chalked it up to America’s wealth. People there can afford to waste soap, he said.
“We laughed about it,” said Mr. Kayongo. “But the idea stuck in my head. What if we took some of this soap back home, recycled it, made brand new soap and gave it to people who didn’t have a single bar of soap?”
After years of pondering the question, 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.
Mr. Kayongo started by speaking to a meeting of Atlanta hotel managers last April. He was surprised at how many agreed to collect their used soap for him. There are now 40 Atlanta hotels participating. Mr. Kayongo has about two tons of soap in an Alpharetta warehouse and another two tons in a friend’s basement.
He hopes to make his first shipment to Africa in October. The soap will be shipped by freighter to Kenya and trucked to Uganda, where it will be sterilized and reshaped into new bars for distribution at refugee camps where soap is scarce. Reprocessing the soap will create jobs in Africa for local workers, he said.
Mr. Kayongo and his wife, Sarah Kayongo, who is also from Uganda and works for an Atlanta translation firm, have formed a non-profit corporation, the Global Soap Project. A freight forwarding company in Green Bay, Wis., Relief Cargo, that specializes in shipping donated items from humanitarian organizations, has agreed to defray part of the $18,000 cost of the first five-ton load to Africa. The project is also seeking donations to cover expenses.
“If we can make this work, I can see setting it up in every country in Africa,” said Relief Cargo president Andrew Drescher, whose company has shipped donated items ranging from blankets to school supplies, but never raw soap.
Soap Can Save Lives
The need for soap is great in Uganda and elsewhere in Africa where poverty and many other factors often make it difficult for people to get it, said Emmanuel d’Harcourt, a medical doctor and senior health director at International Rescue Committee, which specializes in resettling refugees and improving the conditions of the camps where they live.
“We have compelling evidence that hand washing with soap is very effective in combating diarrhea and other diseases,” Dr. d’Harcourt told GlobalAtlanta. Worldwide, 2 million people annually die of diarrhea, he said. A 2004 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association estimated that the number of deaths from diarrhea in the world’s poorest areas could be cut in half with increased hand washing with soap.
Steve Luby, one of the authors of that study who now heads the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s emerging infections program in Bangladesh, sees promise in the soap project.
“It sounds to me like someone is trying to do something that is good for the world,” he told GlobalAtlanta in an e-mail interview. “I applaud this. It sounds like a better idea than discarding the soap in a landfill or doing nothing at all to address the problems of poverty or ill health.”
Poverty is the major reason there is so little soap in the poorest areas of the world, said Dr. Luby. “In Bangladesh, 70 percent of the population lives on less than $2 per person per day,” he said. “In these settings, it is very difficult for families to secure sufficient income for food, water and shelter. The population that would derive the greatest health benefits from soap is the population for whom it is least affordable.”
Bahadur Subba, an International Rescue Committee case worker in Atlanta, lived in a refugee camp in Nepal from 1992 to 2005. "We were not supplied with soap," he told GlobalAtlanta.
If families had money, they would buy soap from a local market. Those without money would use their food rations to buy soap. "People used to eat less," said Mr. Subba. "They would sell off the extra food in the local market and use the money to buy soap."
Expensive Soap, Diverted from Landfills
On a balmy August morning, Mr. Kayongo pulled his Ford Explorer up to the loading dock of Atlanta’s Ritz-Carlton, Buckhead and began transferring bars of soap from a dumpster into plastic bags to be hauled to the Alpharetta warehouse.
“This would all be in a landfill,” Mr. Kayongo said, lifting the heavy bags into his SUV.
The Ritz-Carlton room attendants collect the used bars of Bvlgari soap in separate bags for Mr. Kayongo instead of tossing them in the trash. It is expensive soap, selling new at retail for about $10 per bar.The room attendants don’t mind the extra effort it takes to recycle the soap, said Valerie Stephens, room attendant trainer at the Ritz-Carlton. “When you’re thinking about someone else, it’s easier to do,” she said.
When the Ritz-Carlton, Buckhead hotel manager, Olivia Brown, heard Mr. Kayongo speak at the hotel association meeting, she was impressed by his passion and by the chance for Ritz-Carlton to contribute to a community cause while increasing its recycling efforts.
Whether the donated soap will eventually help Africa, Ms. Brown is not sure. “If we don’t try, we won’t know,” she said.
At the Alpharetta warehouse, Mr. Kayongo opens the bags of soap, sorted by hotel, and displays them as if they were jewels. They are in different colors; yellow, bright green, white, with an assortment of scents such as lemon and sage. The more expensive the hotel, the larger, more colorful and fragrant, the bar of soap.
“The writing is still on this bar,” said Mr. Kayongo. “It’s still new soap.”
The Kayongos understand why Americans would be puzzled over why something as simple as soap would be hard to find in Africa. Yet they point to World Bank statistics that more than a billion people worldwide live on less than $1 per day.
“Having soap is really a luxury, believe it or not,” said Sarah Kayongo.
In northern Uganda, nearly 400,000 people still live in refugee camps following years of fighting between a rebel group called the Lord’s Resistance Army and government troops
Mr. Kayongo himself was once a refugee from Uganda. His family fled to Kenya following fighting during the reign of military dictator Idi Amin in the early 1970s. His father lost the soap business and a printing press but later returned to Uganda and became a member of parliament there.
With abundant donations from U.S. hotels and the need for soap so great, the Kayongos do not want to limit the project to Atlanta or to Uganda. The need is just too great, they said.“How many hotels are in this country and how much soap are they throwing away?” Mr. Kayongo asked, preparing to collect another donation from another gleaming Atlanta hotel.
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