Global Health Issue
Over two billion people across the world lack basic sanitation, causing the spread of infectious diseases and hygiene-related deaths.
Tragically, over 5 million children under the age of five die each year, mostly because of preventable infectious diseases. Globally, diarrhoea and pneumonia are among the leading causes of childhood deaths, claiming the lives of more children than any other infectious disease.
“Half of the 9,000 children that are estimated to die from diseases such as diarrhoea and pneumonia every day in our poorest countries could be saved by the routine use of handwashing with soap.”
Professor Martyn Jeggo, School of Medicine, Deakin University
Why Soap?
The World Health Organisation and UNICEF Integrated Global Action Plan for Pneumonia and Diarrhoea (GAPPD) aims to end preventable child deaths by 2025. A key recommendation for the prevention and treatment of pneumonia and diarrhoea is handwashing with soap.
Research has shown that handwashing with soap is vital to improving the health and development of children in disadvantaged communities, and can reduce the number of diarrhoea cases by over 40 per cent.
Hand hygiene has a dramatic impact on preventing deaths and illnesses caused by trachoma, worm infections, chronic malnutrition, swine flu, pneumonia, SARs, neo-mortality and diarrhoea.
The benefits of handwashing with soap extend beyond improvements to health. Good hygiene removes barriers to education, nutrition, economic opportunity and equity. Children are healthier, have less missed school days and have improved education outcomes.
Handwashing with soap and improved hygiene practices is a simple, effective way to save lives.
How does it work?
Globally, travellers and hotels throw away about five million bars of waste or unused soap every day.
Large volumes of discarded soap end up in overflowing landfills and directly affect our precious environment.
Recognising this waste and in response to the growing and critical need for soap, Soap Aid developed its Hotel to Hands’ Program.
We collect, sort, clean and reprocess hotel soap into fresh, hygienic soap bars for distribution to targeted communities around the world.
We are committed to making meaningful and sustainable changes within the hotel industry by;
- Redirecting millions of bars of discarded soap from disastrous landfills
- Reducing the extraction and use of raw materials
- Reducing carbon emissions by 59% when compared to using virgin soaps*
*Carbon Reduction Institute (2016). Emissions Comparison Report. A comparative study of recycled and virgin soap for Soap Aid.
Discarded or used soaps from hotels are collected & sorted
Unique
re-processing
equipment cleans, crushes & filters hotel soap
Heating and blending process creates soap noodles ready for recycling
All used soap is recycled with no wastage
New, hygienic soap bars are created
Bars of soap packed in boxes ready for distribution
Soap and hygiene training are delivered to targeted communities
Hand washing with soap is extremely simple yet effective in saving lives
Our Impact
Soap Aid works directly with local community impact partners to ensure the ongoing supply of soap and vital hygiene education.
We are committed to improvements in handwashing behaviour and partner with organisations, NGOs, government departments and other charities who are already engaged in communities to educate children and families on the use of handwashing with soap.
We are proud to have supplied our soap to remote Aboriginal communities in Western Australia, Northern Territory, South Australia, and targeted communities around the world.
We are developing our operations internationally in response to the increasing demand for critically needed soap.
Every bar of soap we recycle and distribute can help save lives.
