Not-for-profit organisations award Special commendation: Noah Soap
Winnie Kalene, a 67-year-old retired housekeeper and cancer survivor, has been a club member and volunteer soap-maker at the Neigbourhood Old Age Homes (Noah) in Woodstock, Cape Town since 2010.
She “really loves making soap” and the social enterprise helps to lower her blood pressure because of the warmth and relaxation offered through “talking and having fun”. Seventy percent of profits from the Noah Soap programme goes directly to the creators; the rest is used for operational costs such as glycerine. The project has made a number of significant payouts to its six dedicated volunteers.
“Noah Soap started as an income-generating initiative to supplement the pensions of members of the social clubs,” said fundraiser Laura Schultz.
Using soap discarded by hotels and guesthouses, the soap-makers create beautiful new bars, which diverts the discarded soap from landfill sites and reuses the original ingredients.
There is general resistance to using petroleum-based oils in high-quality soap, but the use of plant oils for soap-making is not necessarily sound practice or sustainable because food is turned into detergents. It is better to recycle nonrenewable oils than squander edible fats.
Most welcome
“We had the commercial launch of the project in 2011,” Schultz said. “Soap is first collected from hotels. It is scraped clean and the outside layer peeled. We chop them into pieces and use glycerine to form the pieces into bars.
“It is all done at the social clubs in Khayelithsha. Even if the soap was not cleaned, there would be no chance of contamination because the caustic properties of soap kill bacteria by destroying their cell walls.”
The soaps are packaged as corporate gifts or for use in guest houses. “For the pensioners who make the soaps the extra R100 or so a month they earn is most welcome,” said Schultz.
Noah is a programme of Catholic Welfare and Development, which provides homes and services to the poorest elderly in the Western Cape through creating communes that keep elderly people in their communities for as long as possible, rather than in institutions.
The Greening judges commended the combination of social and environmental benefits in the project. Although small, it was innovative and could be scaled up, they said.
“It’s resolving a waste problem and helping the elderly at the same time. It’s a clever recycling initiative with a good social impact,” the judges said.