Sustainability: Initiative has reached out to 1 Lakh children, produced 2 Lakh recycled soap
Every year lakhs of travellers stay in Mumbai's elite residential hotels, and leave behind barely used soaps which are discarded and end up in landfills. For many children residing in villages and slums, buying soap is a luxury. Many use mud and water as cleaning agents even today.
A unique initiative 'Sundara' has come up with a productive way to address this. Brainchild of Erin Zaikis, a social entrepreneur, who came to Mumbai from Massachusetts, this endeavour has turned out to be a 'soap revolution' that aims to change lives of many children and families.
In 2015, Erin along with her team of women started collecting leftover soap bars from elite residential hotels in Mumbai. The collected pieces are put through a cleaning process and then recycled into fresh bars of soap and distributed to orphanages, slums, village schools and rural health centres. "I started Sundara after I met children 13 years of age who did not know what soap was. Statistics reveal that the world has enough soap for 11 billion people but so much soap goes into landfills because of the hospitality industry. In a country like India 70 million people don't have access to using a soap even once a month. Hence, with our initiative we are able to connect the waste to the need in an eco-friendly process that provides fair wage employment for women"
Darshana Soman, one of the volunteer's who lives in the neighbouring village said, "We at Sundara have been imparting cleanliness lessons to children, and this has helped change people's attitude towards hygiene."
About 25% of recycled soaps go to urban slums while 75% are given to children in rural villages. The initiative not only distributes these soaps but also conducts hygiene education programmes in block level schools and shelter homes. So far the movement has reached out to 1 lakh children, prevented over 14,000 kg of soap waste from entering landfills and produced 2 lakh recycled soap bars.
Zee Media Newsroom
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