The case for recycling hotel soap bars in Pakistan based on Eco-Soap Bank's model
Last week I came across Samir Lakhani's start-up called Eco-Soap Bank (ecosoapbank.org/) through a post on Linkedin. His vision for better hygiene aside, his team have done a remarkable job in setting up a model in impoverished countries that collects and recycles leftover soap bars from hotels and distributes 'new' bars of soaps to schools and communities along with education and awareness about health and hygiene through hand-washing.
There is a lack of proper hand-washing facilities around the world, with about 40% of the global population without access to proper soap and water for hand-washing (UNICEF DATA, 2019). This is a horrific situation for global hygiene because hand-washing with soap has been proven to effectively reduce the risk of diarrhoeal diseases significantly (Curtis and Cairncross, 2003). Within Pakistan, UNICEF estimates that 40% of the total population has access to limited or no washing facilities, with this number increasing to 54% within rural areas.
As a simple exercise, off the top of my head, I put together some numbers to estimate how much recycled soap can be distributed in Pakistan.
- I have taken the top 10 hotels (four and five stars)
- They range from 100-room facilities to 607-rooms
- I've taken the global average room occupancy rate of 65%
- Average hotel soap bar weight is assumed 25 g
- Assumed number of bars of soap given to every room per day is 1.5
- Assumed % of bar consumed is 40% (i.e. 60% is thrown away)
- Wastage during the recycling process is taken as 10%
The model is shown below:
This rather rudimentary estimation suggests that around 135,000 bars of soap (100g each) can be recycled from leftover soap from just the top 10 hotels in Pakistan.
Whether this is a significant enough number to make immediate impact is unclear but this is certainly a start and the brilliant operational model built by the team at Eco-Soap Bank can inspire such work to be carried out in Pakistan. In addition to preventing tonnes of leftover soap from occupying landfills, they can be economically recycled to help reduce incidence of diseases caused by lack of proper hygiene and washing facilities.
References:
Curtis, V. and Cairncross, S. (2003). Effect of washing hands with soap on diarrhoea risk in the community: a systematic review. The Lancet Infectious Diseases, 3(5), pp.275-281.
Eco-Soap Bank. (2019). Eco-Soap Bank: Soap Recycling & Hygiene Education. [online] Available at: https://ecosoapbank.org/ [Accessed 17 Sep. 2019].
UNICEF DATA. (2019). Hygiene and Hand Washing Statistics- UNICEF DATA. [online] Available at: https://data.unicef.org/topic/water-and-sanitation/hygiene/ [Accessed 17 Sep. 2019].