Victorian charity is recycling soap and saving lives

A Victorian not-for-profit is taking on one of the accommodation industry’s biggest waste streams, recycling soap and saving lives. 

“A bar of soap is such a basic item, but it is profoundly effective to help save lives.”

Thirteen years and almost three million bars of recycled soap later, the impact is not lost on Mike Matulick, Founder and Chair of Soap Aid.

What began as an environmental endeavour to eliminate the millions of tonnes of waste soap going to landfills has become a humanitarian operation with global reach. 

Working with the accommodation industry, Melbourne-based Soap Aid has distributed more than 3,000,000 recycled soap bars to vulnerable communities in Australia, Asia, the Pacific, Africa, and New Zealand. Consequently, more than 422,000 children and adults were supplied with soap for 12 months, and more than 106,000 children’s lives saved.

“It’s hard to think of someone not being able to afford a bar of soap or not having access to one because of their living conditions,” says Carol Bellew, Soap Aid General Manager Operations. “But it’s a reality.”

Languishing in landfill

Globally, about five million bars of waste or unused soap are thrown away daily by travellers and hotels. Most of it ends up in landfills.

It was that waste that initially piqued Mike’s interest. Working in a business that supplied soap and amenities to the hotel industry opened his eyes to the scale of the problem.

“When you look at the hotel world, guests can take shampoo and conditioner home. But generally, soap is a hardly used product,” Mike says. “On some soap bars we receive, the emblem is still clearly visible on the surface because it’s barely been used. People use it once or twice, then check out. That’s when we check-in.”

The Hotel to Hands program started with hotels and motels and has grown to include all types of accommodation partners to divert their soap from landfill. Soap Aid collects the soap from partners, it’s then hand sorted, separated from any packaging, and scraped clean of any foreign bodies. 

All soap shapes, sizes, colours, and fragrances are returned to raw material, known as a soap noodle. The noodles are run through a series of filters and extruders to bring them back to a form that can be cut into new hygienic soap bars for distribution to targeted communities worldwide.

Community partners

It’s a labour-intensive process, but that is an example of Soap Aid’s determination to make a difference. The charity has partnered with The Bridge Inc, a social purpose organisation that provides services and support to people with disabilities and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds. 

Carol says it’s a small but excellent team that works across Soap Aid’s warehouse and logistics.

Mike says the partnership is an example of the benefit that the Hotel to Hands program provides across the entire value chain, from the people who work on the lines, to the accommodation providers, and the end of the process where soap is physically delivered to communities in critical need.

“It’s a wonderful thing to see it come to life and be part of a wonderful team that makes it happen,” he says.

“The end beneficiary is someone we don’t often meet; it can be challenging to capture that story, but I’ve been able to witness first-hand the impact we’re having in communities in Cambodia and other markets we supply.

“I’ve met the families and the children that have ultimately received our soap.”

The impact

More than two billion people across the world lack basic sanitation, causing the spread of infectious diseases and hygiene-related deaths. 

Carol says research has shown that handwashing with soap is vital to improving the health and development of children and adults in disadvantaged communities and can reduce the number of hygiene related deaths and diseases, such as diarrhoeal and pneumonia cases, by more than 40 per cent.

In Vanuatu, Soap Aid provides soap to the Ministry of Health for distribution to schools to support hygiene education. It’s also working with Days for the Girls Foundation and the Matato Foundation to provide soap and hygiene kits for girls.

In Cambodia, Soap Aid has provided a way for rural women to earn an income as hygiene ambassadors in response to many childhood deaths and disease incidences caused by lack of access to soap, hygiene education and handwashing 

Back home, Soap Aid distributes recycled soap to national country health programs. It’s also supporting good health, hygiene and handwashing through The Trachoma Control program, a Western Australia Country Health Service initiative.

Trachoma, a bacterial infection of the eye, causes blindness, and Australia has had some of the highest incidences of trachoma in the developed world. The condition frequently occurs in arid and dusty environments such as in rural and outback communities in Australia and cases are being reduced through this important program. 

Soap Aid doesn’t deliver soap directly to communities but works with community impact partners who distribute the soap and education to those in need. Laura O’Leary, Soap Aid Partnership Engagement Officer, says Soap Aid wants to ensure there is an education component when soap is distributed to help communities understand the importance of hygiene and handwashing to prevent diseases.

She says there’s been a significant increase in the demand for soap donations in the past eight months as the cost-of-living crisis deepens and local organisations struggle to help people who are homeless or can’t afford the basics.

As of November 2023, Soap Aid had distributed more than 17 tonnes of recycled soap Australia-wide.

“We’re able to help not-for-profits or community groups as long as they can fill the soap plus hygiene education criteria,” Laura says.

A solid case

Demand for the recycled soap continues to grow, and Soap Aid is encouraged by industry take-up of Hotel to Hands, but it believes there is room to grow. One of the hurdles is the move away from bar soap to liquid soap, particularly during COVID-19.

Mike says Soap Aid continues to advocate for accommodation providers to use soap bars over liquid. When comparing both, hard bars are consistently more eco-friendly and cost-effective.

Liquid soaps are often petroleum-based and require emulsifying agents and stabilisers to maintain consistency. A 2009 Institute of Environmental Engineering study concluded that liquid soaps leave a 25 per cent larger carbon footprint than bar soaps.

Because of the chemical formula and ingredients, it takes about seven times more chemical feedstocks and processing to manufacture liquid soap. The chemicals used require more wastewater treatment than those used in bar soap during end-of-life disposal.

“It’s a debate within the accommodation world that’s still playing out,” Mike says. “Our experience is that liquid soap is gaining traction in the hotel space, but we ask those hotels to consider it deeply and understand the choice to replace a bar of soap with a liquid soap bottle has quite an impact.

“While there may be a place for liquid soap in shared bathroom and washing situations, for accommodation providers, bar soap uses less packaging material than the thick plastic that liquid soap bottles are made of. Not having liquid soap dispensers can reduce plastic waste by about 20 per cent in accommodation bathrooms, which is significant.” 

COVID-19 not only interrupted Soap Aid’s supply of used soap but postponed its relocation to new premises. With support from a Sustainability Victoria grant, Soap Aid re-established its recycling plant and has been repurposing soap in the new plant since January 2023. 

It was the beginning of a big 12 months for the organisation – it won a Keep Australia Beautiful Victorian Community award, was a finalist in the 2023 Premier’s Sustainability Awards and received recognition for Mental Health and Wellbeing Achievement, at the Australia Charitable Foundation, Community Achievement Awards in November.

The team is thankful for the attention on Soap Aid and the demand for its work.

“There’s a sense, at least that I carry, that the potential to grow this into much more is quite real,” Mike says. “That’s not coming from a selfish perspective, but from a need perspective.

“There’s still enormous potential, not just from the accommodation industry, to collect this waste to stop it from going to landfill, but also the demand for distribution of our soap far outweighs our supply.

“It’s very clear that what was a deeply embedded value to help reduce waste has now become not just a nice idea.” 

For more information, visit: www.soapaid.org