The One Gallon Soap Company

It's estimated that the hotel industry in the US throws away two million bars of soap everyday. 

We collect those used bars of soap, clean them, sterilize them, and manufacture them into liquid hand soap. We've created a closed loop soap recycling ecosystem. We collect bar soap from local hotels, manufacture them in a local facility, and sell our liquid hand soap back to local businesses and households. 

Our model is designed to be picked up and replicated in any city across the world. It turns a previous economic, visual, and environmental burden into an economic driver empowering communities. 

The One Gallon Soap Company is focused on solving two major problems. The first is the hotel waste stream problem. In the US alone over two million bars of soap are thrown away everyday. An average soap size of 3oz, used lightly, and thrown away at 2oz, results in 250,000 pounds of soap heading to landfills everyday. 

The second problem is the prevalence of single use plastics in the liquid hand soap industry. Whether it is single use plastic cartridges put into wall mounted soap dispensers, or 12oz plastic soap dispensers made for home use, it is contributing to the eight million tons of plastic that finds its way into oceans around the world every year.   

Both problems result from heavily leveraged linear and single use economies. Our solutions push consumers towards a circular economy by giving them a convenient and affordable purchasing alternative. More importantly, our solution incorporates communities and enables hotels, businesses, and households to work together, by using The One Gallon Soap Company's liquid hand soap, to fight a global problem at a local level and on a daily basis. 

Most directly we serve the hotels we collect soap from (and their customers), the businesses who buy our liquid hand soap (and their customers), and the households that buy our liquid hand soap. Indirectly we are serving every individual in the communities we operate in. Our work removes a visual, economic, and environmental strain on communities. It transforms the burden of trash into an economic driver empowering communities. 

We work closely with our partner hotel to discover best methods of collection. For example, to encourage involvement and ownership, we set collection goals for the housekeeping staff. If they reach the goal each month, we throw them a pizza party. 

We work closely with our customers to discover the easiest and best methods for soap delivery. We find out what works in our delivery model, what could be improved, and how we're meeting their needs. 

Our solution to the hotel bar soap waste stream problem is to collect the used bars of soap, clean them, sterilize them, and manufacture them into liquid hand soap for use in businesses and households. To accomplish this, we use available technology, co-working commercial kitchen space, a simple ingredient list, and basic chemistry. It's important that our model is successful in any community, regardless of access to sophisticated technology, so our production process for manufacturing bar soap into liquid hand soap must remain as simple as possible. 

After transforming the bar soap into the liquid hand soap, we have to consider packaging and delivery. Our closed loop soap recycling ecosystem is how we tackle the problem of single use plastics in the liquid soap industry. Collecting from local hotels, manufacturing in a local facility, and delivering back out to businesses in the local community allows us to provide a refill service that almost entirely removes single use plastics. We deliver soap in a gallon jug on a monthly basis. When we deliver new soap, we pick up the empty gallons used in the previous month. Our wall mounted dispensers have no single use plastic cartridges.

We do not however see what we've accomplished as an end. It is only the start of a positive impact circular economy. We can improve upon our sink side dispensers by working with recycled glass manufacturers to create a recycled glass sink side dispenser. We can create a non plastic vessel, like a liquid proof canvas bag made from recycled material, for delivering soap refills. We can manufacture our own biodegradable bar soap to sell to hotels we partner with to better serve our environment and our final product. We can partner with current in home services like curbside compost collection to provide households with an easy to manage refill program than adds no additional vehicles, and therefore carbon emissions, to the road. 

Soap has been around for a very long time in a very unchanging way. Liquid hand soap, not popularized until the 1970's, has largely remained stagnant in it's innovations. Companies like Dr. Bronner's have bridged the gap into castile soap, Method into all natural soap, and Cleancult into home refill programs. But none of these companies have truly changed the nature of the liquid hand soap industry.

The One Gallon Soap Company seems to be the first to manufacture and produce a commercial recycled liquid hand soap. This innovation means that we're not just environmentally responsible, like Method or Dr. Bronners. Our product, and this is unique to consumer goods period, has a more positive than negative impact on the environment. We've found a way to create a liquid hand soap that introduces almost no new material into the world, uses very little energy in production, and creates almost no waste. 

Our raw material sourcing (soap collection from hotels), also allows us to operate with a unique business model. The model relies heavily on local circular flow. Hotel to factory to businesses and homes. Our closed loop soap recycling ecosystem allows our liquid hand soap to be a local product no matter where it is used, it allows for customized delivery programs, and it cuts back on the emissions of shipping goods around the world.

The One Gallon Soap Company utilizes readily available technology to turn a current waste stream into an economic driver within local communities. We simplify as much of our process as possible to make replicating it in communities across the world as easy as possible. Grinders, stock pots, and simple burners are among the equipment we use.

We rely heavily on the technology that has lead people to understand the relationships of molecules and compounds. How can we prevent the water and soap mixture from separating with non harmful materials? How can we prevent the liquid soap mixture from reverting back to its solid bar soap state without using harmful materials? A strong understanding gives us the opportunity to find materials like sodium bicarbonate or food grade potassium bicarbonate.

The One Gallon Soap Company is addressing two specific problems. The hotel bar soap waste stream and single use plastics in the liquid hand soap industry. The broader problem addressed by SOLVE, linear economies, is exemplified by both the hotel bar soap economy and the single use plastics economy. 

We already have processes in place for collecting soap, cleaning it, sterilizing it, and manufacturing it into liquid hand soap. Furthermore we have been successfully doing it for over two years. We have both business customers and household customers that buy our soap on a regular basis. We've created a successful solution to the hotel bar soap waste stream and in doing transformed that formally linear economy into a circular one.

Our solution to the liquid hand soap plastics problem is successful but can be improved upon. We currently sell soap by the gallon and in small format glass jars. We offer a delivery program to businesses that allows us to reuse gallon jugs indefinitely. And we provide dispensers that can be refilled time and time again. We can solve the problem further by using sink side dispensers made out of recycled glass and creating a refill container out of reusable liquid proof fabric. We will keep improving our system until there is no single use packaging in the liquid hand soap industry. 

Currently we serve thousands of people. Our soap is collected from a hotel in Portland, Maine. It is used in businesses like coffee shops, breweries, restaurants, and offices. It impacts the community of Portland, the restaurants and hotels, and the visiting tourists eating and drinking at local establishments.

In one year we hope to be serving tens of thousands as we expand and grow throughout Portland and into Portsmouth, NH.

In five years we hope to be serving millions and operating in major eastern cities like Boston, Providence, Hartford, and New York. 

We're also beginning to work with Community for a Sustainable World to bring our soap recycling processes to communities in need around the world. The partnership would teach communities how to recycle and manufacture soap. The process would allow them to cut back heavily on monthly hygiene costs while creating a sustainable income stream through selling the final product. We're aiming to launch this project in Botshabelo, South Africa in the summer of 2020.

In the next year our goal is to exhaust the supply of bar soap from our partner The Press Hotel. We collect close to 200 pounds of soap each month. This translates to almost 300 gallons of liquid hand soap that we could produce each month. The average business uses four gallons per month, so in the next year, we're hoping to sign on about 65 new accounts (we have ten customers currently).

Once we have gotten to the point that we are using all of The Press Hotel soap, we will feel we've proven the market and the potential for our product. From there, we hope to raise money to expand into Boston. As we expand into Boston, we hope to partner with a soap manufacturer to produce our own bar soap that we sell (at cost) to hotels. That bar soap will be what we collect on the back end, both making our liquid hand soap uniform across all hotel collection as well as biodegradable and therefore furthering our environmental mission.

From there, we hope to leverage a franchise model to expand into all major cities across the US.

Our soap has a tendency to thicken over time. It can become so thick that it will not pump out of a dispenser. We sell our soap with this information up front and inform customers that they will need to stir daily to use our soap. Though many smaller establishments have chosen to use our soap despite the extra step, the user experience needs to be improved. 

For our sales to be our priority, we first need to find a process and formula that will prevent our soap from thickening over time. We're focusing all of our energy on moving that task forward. We're on track to have an updated version of our product by the end of July.

Moving forward, I expect we'll have a big cultural barrier to overcome both in the next year and in the next five. People think used soap is gross. However, our early adopters have not had an issue with the concept. As they continue to use it and normalize it, our belief is that it will be easier for the next wave of users, and the wave after them to adopt. 

We will also have the barrier of standardized supply. We may have to be collecting different bar soap from different hotels. If this is the case, it challenges us to create a liquid hand soap blend, or to create a system of separation that allows us to sell multiple styles of liquid hand soap.

The formula issue is a matter of diligent experimenting and patience. Once we have tried an updated batch of soap, we must watch it for 2-4 weeks to see what it's characteristics are. We are currently experimenting full time, diligently taking notes, and moving the formula forward with small additions of ingredients. 

Our cultural barrier will be overcome through a great deal of education. We currently sterilize each bar of soap with an autoclave. We've tested the process by inoculating bars of soap and running them through the autoclave to confirm it destroys any and all bacteria that might be living on the soap. Sharing both the cleaning and sterilizing process will help to bring users from skeptical to believer. 

Overcoming the supply standardization issue will be about supplying hotels with our own bar soap. Our goal is to require partner hotels to purchase our bar soap. Our bar soap will be a high end castile bar soap that we sell for a highly discounted rate, either at cost or even at a loss, as we can build that cost into our liquid hand soap end product. This will allow us not only to standardize our supply, but also to control our ingredient list.

We are a team of three founders. We're a Business major, a biochemist, and myself, an English Lit major.  

In a lot of ways we are actually probably not. Our expertise is not in soap making or soap recycling. Our time is limited as we all work full time jobs. And our access to proper equipment and facilities is limited. 

But there is something that sets us apart. We're dedicated to solving the hotel waste stream problem. We feel the work we're doing is as much a responsibility as it is an opportunity. That means that we're not giving up. We're not settling for okay. And we're not stopping at pretty good. We're working on this until there is no more bar soap in the US being thrown away. And then we'll move onto the next country and onto the next problem. 

The One Gallon Soap Company represents a new way of doing business, a way of interacting with the environment, a new definition of consumerism. We take seriously the idea that what we're doing can change the way people create goods, sell goods, and consume goods. Our vision is bold, and so even though we are not a team that will perfectly execute, we are a team that will go the distance.

We think of all of our relationships as partnerships. The hotel we collect soap from, the businesses and homes we sell soap to, and everyone else we come into contact with. 

Some key partnerships include The Press Hotel, University of Southern Maine, and the handful of local businesses buying our soap. We worked with The Press Hotel to develop a system for soap collection. We worked with USM to discover a scalable sterilization method. And we continue to work with local businesses to discover a convenient cost effective soap delivery program and get feedback on consistency and quality of our liquid hand soap.

Our model is best described as a closed loop soap recycling ecosystem. We collect soap from local hotels, manufacture it locally, and deliver it back out to local businesses and homes. 

- Our model is designed to create a sense of community among those involved with our soap. Whether you work at a hotel we collect from, or a business we sell to, or buy the soap for your home, you are part of a local community tackling the hotel waste stream and single use plastics problems on a daily basis and by doing something (washing your hands) that you already do everyday. 

- We collect the bar soap from partner hotels at no charge. We sell our gallons to businesses starting at $22 and ending at $16 depending on volume used monthly. 

Our path to financial sustainability is through the sales of our soap. Our first and primary market is selling to businesses who use our soap in their bathrooms. These businesses can be coffee shops, restaurants, breweries, public libraries, offices, schools, colleges, etc. 

Despite the progress we have made over the past three years, there has been a looming challenge we are still working to overcome. The liquid hand soap we make has a tendency to thicken over time. The result is that it often is too thick to pump out of a dispenser. The challenge has stunted our growth as we do not do sales. We service our current customers who use our soap knowing they need to stir the soap daily.   

We need help taking our soap to the next level. Maybe this takes shape through a partnership with MIT. Maybe it takes shape through an introduction to Seventh Generation, Method, or Tom's of Maine that leads to relationship in which the incubate us. We've talked to countless chemists in the soap industry, emailed the companies above, and spent hours running experiments ourselves. We continue to move closer to the product we want to be producing, but a key partnership through MIT Solve could easily be the nudge that takes us from the pilot stage to growth stage.

- An academic institution like MIT providing resources and knowledge to better our formula and process so that our soap is comparable to traditional liquid hand soaps

- A company like Method, Seventh Generation, or Tom's of Maine that could incubate The One Gallon Soap Company through access to resources and knowledge

- A cosmetic development company like Avomeen that could provide consulting services or development services at a reduced or free rate to better our formula and process. 

The GM prize on Circular Economy could make a huge impact on our ability to outsource product development to an industry professional. Matched with the right introductions, this money would be used to hire a chemist familiar with soap making and product development to create a process and formula that results in liquid hand soap comparable (if not superior) to traditional liquid hand soap.

Once we are producing a liquid hand soap that does not require any extra work to use, we will begin again on outbound sales, and move into the growth stage.