From Atlanta Hotels, Tons of Soap Headed to Africa
From Global Atlanta, excerpt:
A common practice in the United States that probably goes unnoticed by most people completely baffled Derreck Kayongo.He 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.
