Take A Look At This Man’s Journey Who Donated 1.4 Million Soap Bars in Developing Countries
I’m sure not many of you must have heard about Eco Soap Bank. Have you? Well, there is indeed such a bank whose owner has attained a position in the top 10 CNN Hero for 2017. No, that’s not all as the man has also acquired another position in the Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in the year 2020.
Did you guess who are we referring to here? Well, Samir Lakhani is the star of the day. He established Eco Soap Bank in 2014 with the purpose to get clean bathing soaps to every poor. And any idea how does he do it? Well, by recycling partially used soap bars from hotels.
How did the idea of Eco Soap Bank come to his mind?
In 2014, Samir made a trip to rural parts of Columbia when he saw a woman bathing her newborn with laundry detergent. He was shocked to see how she could use toxic detergent to bathe her infant child. Moreover, he was so affected by the incident that he put himself into research and found out that only 1 per cent of the total population of developing countries get to use bathing soaps.
Knowing the fact kept him even more engaged with the matter. He then realised that while the poor don’t get to use the soaps to bathe themselves, hotels and motels render soaps to the guests in huge quantities. Most importantly, the soaps remained unused, or partially used and in the end go to waste.
Samir could not sit idly and let go of these thoughts. Hence, he decided to start an initiative to collect such soap bars from hotels and motels and donate them to the poor. After all, everybody has the right to clean themselves with the supposed soap bars. Samir denotes that no child deserves to suffer from preventable illness because of the unavailability of soap.
How does the initiative Eco Soap Bank work?
The organisation collects the soaps which are partially used. It collects from different-different locations. The second step goes into sanitisation and sterilisation which turns these soaps into fresh new ones. Now, these fresh and clean soaps are donated to the needy ones, of course, free of cost!
Above all, the organisation has 16 recycling branches in 10 developing countries. Guess, how many soaps have been donated by now? Well, for the past 8 years, 9 million of these have been made to donations. Moreover, 1.4 million pounds of these have been recycled in these years.
That’s not all! This organisation has also been working on employing poor women in poverty-stricken areas. Additionally, it also helps in preventing communicable diseases from spreading due to the lack of hygiene. There’s no doubt Samir truly deserves to achieve the awards he has. In fact, he deserves even more than that for his efforts and dedication he has named to poor people.
She Made A Soap For Her Baby Which Is Sold Worldwide Today
Author: Simran K Parmar
A post graduate in English Literature, secular humanist, critical thinker, an outspoken atheist, follower of equality and a lover of philosophy. craftedfashion94@gmail.com
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