Recycled soap washes away ills of the poor

Port-Au-Prince – A Haitian programme to recycle used soap bars from luxury hotels has proven a win-win-win proposition, reducing waste, helping fight water-borne disease and giving employees the chance to send their kids to school and put food on the table.

The project, simple but effective, has had a remarkable impact.

Laure Bottinelli discovered the idea of soap-recycling while spending time in Southeast Asia. Inspired to try something similar in Haiti, she and two associates in January 2016 created the Anacaona company, Haiti’s only soap-recycling enterprise.

They have already enlisted 25 hotels in the plan.

“In Haiti, nothing is ever wasted. Poverty is such that everything is recovered, reused in one way or another,” said Mai Cardozo Stefanson, part of the management team at Montana, a luxury hotel in Port-au-Prince.

“Normally, the staff saves the soap for their own use. But now they collect used bars and give them to Laure. In return, they receive clean, reconditioned soap bars.

“With the cholera crisis we’re facing, there is the aspect of hygiene education”.

Used soap bars collected from hotel rooms are shredded and melted before being reconditioned and resold. –