Ethical businesses in Cambodia: Making money, helping people

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Re: Ethical businesses in Cambodia: Making money, helping people

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Cambodian Fashion Shoot. Not a new article, but may be of interest to expat women looking for beautiful ethical clothes, made in Cambodia. Classy fashion shoot in and around Kep.

From Cambodia with love
September 25, 2019
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Discover takes you to the sleepy seaside town of Kep to showcase the hottest sustainable and ethical fashions coming out of Cambodia.
More here: https://discover-cambodia.com/from-cambodia-with-love/
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Re: Ethical businesses in Cambodia: Making money, helping people

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What a great idea. Win, win.

January 1, 2020
How recycled soap helps rural communities

Millions of tourists visit developing countries every year, generating a steady stream of wasted hotel soap in the process, according to a report by Eco-Soap Bank, an NGO established by American student Samir Lakhani in 2014 when he was volunteering in the Kingdom. The NGO’s goal is to put a cap on wasted soap and help rural communities.

Five years have gone by, and ESB continues the work to help prevent soap, a form of non-biodegradable waste, from turning up in rubbish piles. Its aim today is still to reduce waste and pollution.

Siem Reap city, Siem Reap province – Mean Lux, programme manager of ESB, recalls the time Mr Lakhani came up with the idea of establishing ESB to help provide soap to rural communities around the world.

Mr Lux says Mr Lakhani was a volunteer for the Trailblazer Cambodia Organisation, an NGO helping poor communities in Siem Reap province when he saw a woman using laundry detergent powder to wash her baby.

“When he saw the situation, Mr Lakhani was shocked,” he says, adding Mr Lakhani had a moment of realisation upon returning to his hotel. “Once he returned to the hotel where he was staying, he saw hardly used bars of soap being disposed of by room attendants.”

“Based on these events he observed, he came up with an idea to collect used soap for reuse,” Mr Lux notes.

He says Mr Lakhani then created the ESB in collaboration with TCO to collect used soap thrown away by hotels and guesthouses so they can be recycled and donated to impoverished children in rural areas around the world.

Mr Lux says today ESB has several objectives: The first is to collect used soap, shower gel, shampoo, pillows, mattress covers and clothes. The second is to recycle them for reuse. The third is to provide soap recycling jobs, training and education to impoverished women.

“Another important goal is to help children in rural communities avoid communicable diseases through regularly washing their hands with soap before meals and after defecation,” he says. “Therefore, we offer free soap to partner organisations so they can distribute the soap we recycled to their targetted schools as well.”

“Soap is made of chemicals, so it can help kill viruses and prevent infectious diseases. At the same time, it also damages the environment,” Mr Lux adds. “When a bar of soap is thrown away at the dump, rainwater will melt it into the soil and it will affect fertility. The chemicals can also flow into lakes and rivers, which affects biodiversity in water.”

ESB collects used soap from about 200 hotels and guesthouses in Siem Reap city and Phnom Penh. A team collects used soap once every one or two weeks. On average, the team can collect up to 500 kilogrammes each round.

ESB also collects used boxes, newspapers and clothes from supermarkets and hotels in Siem Reap and reuse them as soap packaging.

Keo Sokha, 40, a room attendant at Smiley Hotel in Siem Reap, says she and other room attendants collect soap for ESB.

Ms Sokha says doing so helps the environment, children and rural communities.

“We regularly replace soap every day. Some guests only use a little bit of the soap provided by the hotel so it would be a waste if the soap were thrown away,” she says. “If there is a place to take those used soap for recycling…we are happy to collect them.”

Earlier this year, the World Food Programme began supporting ESB by purchasing 100,000 bars of soap and distributing them to schools under their school meals programme.

WFP country director Francesca Erdelmann says aside from providing meals, WFP teaches children on how to properly wash their hands.

“It is very important for the school children to be able to wash their hand before they have their meal and also after,” she says.

“So this is a social programme implementation that we have, including the provision of nutritious food at schools and teaching children about hygiene practice through washing hands with recycled soap, which is also a part of promoting the environment in Cambodia,” she adds.

Neth Pheaktra, spokesman for the Environment Ministry, says his ministry encourages people to recycle goods, especially environmentally friendly items.

“The ministry encourages this recycling [initiative] because children in communities use [the soap],” Mr Pheaktra says. “It also contributes to the environment.”

ESB is currently planning to expand its operations in Phnom Penh and Banteay Meanchey, Svay Rieng and Preah Sihanouk provinces.

He says civil society organisations should help by supporting recycled soap and getting in touch with ESB to help.

“We want to encourage more production and use of recycled soap because once people use it, they will be interested in the environment they live in…which is part of improving the environment on our planet.”
https://www.khmertimeskh.com/50675539/h ... ommunities
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Re: Ethical businesses in Cambodia: Making money, helping people

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Long read.
The NZ fashion label supporting Cambodia’s unravelling apparel industry
Michael Andrew | Business editor
19 July 2020
With Covid-19 devastating demand for global fashion brands, millions of jobs in Asia’s apparel factories hang by a thread. That’s why one New Zealand business has taken a different tack to keep its Cambodian staff working and well-cared-for.

To the average consumer, there’s little discernible connection between Te Awamutu and the small Cambodian community of Dey Tmey. But such is the interconnectedness of the world that sustainable fashion business Recreate has its headquarters in the Waikato town and its sewing centre on the fringes of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital and largest city.
Image
It’s not an unusual place for a fashion business to base its production; after all, Cambodia has an apparel industry that employs a million workers and contributes 16% of its GDP. But while some giant corporations are there to take advantage of cheap labour and dubious workers rights, Recreate’s sewing centre exists primarily as a means to provide disadvantaged people with a better life.

“We were never about sewing or being a clothing brand,” says founder Erica Gadsby from her Te Awamutu home. “It was more about the employment opportunities. We were just thinking ‘what’s a good industry for people to work in?’ And the leading industry in Cambodia is the garment industry.”

Started in 2013, Recreate’s Dey Tmey sewing centre employs a small, highly skilled team of mostly women to make its sustainable organic cotton garments, the bulk of which are sold in New Zealand. The business aims to “transform lives through fashion” and the staff are paid a living wage, work 32.5 hours a week, offered training in sewing and literacy, and support with childcare and schooling.

It also operates in partnership with a Cambodian NGO and a New Zealand Registered Charitable Trust, which means 100% of profits are invested back into the sewing centre and community initiatives.

Image
For Gadsby and her husband, Recreate was a product of the many years they spent working with the marginalised people of Dey Tmey, who were originally slum dwellers living in Phnom Penh. After the government evicted them to build tourist attractions in 2007, they were relocated to rural Dey Tmey, or the “new lands”, where a nascent community took root.

In the early years, Dey Tmey had very little. There was no government support and because it was far from any jobs and schools, poverty was rife and prostitution, drugs and even child slavery sometimes became the only source of income for its increasingly desperate residents. However, over the years that Gadsby and her husband returned to Dey Tmey to work with the community, it gradually began to develop.

“Every year when we went back, there would be a little bit more development: a school, more jobs. But there were never any opportunities for women to work or improve their lives or provide for their kids. So that’s where the original idea came from, just to set something up to provide training.”

Over the past seven years, the centre has trained dozens of women in sewing and pattern design with some of the original students now working in senior roles. Sompoa, the very first student who came to Recreate after working 60 hours a week at a nearby factory, is now team leader imparting her knowledge onto new students. Her husband also works at the centre and together they were able to buy a home with the money they saved through work.
Full article: https://thespinoff.co.nz/business/19-07 ... -industry/
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Re: Ethical businesses in Cambodia: Making money, helping people

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CEOCambodiaNews wrote: Wed Jan 01, 2020 11:40 am What a great idea. Win, win.

January 1, 2020
How recycled soap helps rural communities

Millions of tourists visit developing countries every year, generating a steady stream of wasted hotel soap in the process, according to a report by Eco-Soap Bank, an NGO established by American student Samir Lakhani in 2014 when he was volunteering in the Kingdom. The NGO’s goal is to put a cap on wasted soap and help rural communities.

Five years have gone by, and ESB continues the work to help prevent soap, a form of non-biodegradable waste, from turning up in rubbish piles. Its aim today is still to reduce waste and pollution.

Siem Reap city, Siem Reap province – Mean Lux, programme manager of ESB, recalls the time Mr Lakhani came up with the idea of establishing ESB to help provide soap to rural communities around the world.

Mr Lux says Mr Lakhani was a volunteer for the Trailblazer Cambodia Organisation, an NGO helping poor communities in Siem Reap province when he saw a woman using laundry detergent powder to wash her baby.

“When he saw the situation, Mr Lakhani was shocked,” he says, adding Mr Lakhani had a moment of realisation upon returning to his hotel. “Once he returned to the hotel where he was staying, he saw hardly used bars of soap being disposed of by room attendants.”

“Based on these events he observed, he came up with an idea to collect used soap for reuse,” Mr Lux notes.

He says Mr Lakhani then created the ESB in collaboration with TCO to collect used soap thrown away by hotels and guesthouses so they can be recycled and donated to impoverished children in rural areas around the world.

Mr Lux says today ESB has several objectives: The first is to collect used soap, shower gel, shampoo, pillows, mattress covers and clothes. The second is to recycle them for reuse. The third is to provide soap recycling jobs, training and education to impoverished women.

“Another important goal is to help children in rural communities avoid communicable diseases through regularly washing their hands with soap before meals and after defecation,” he says. “Therefore, we offer free soap to partner organisations so they can distribute the soap we recycled to their targetted schools as well.”

“Soap is made of chemicals, so it can help kill viruses and prevent infectious diseases. At the same time, it also damages the environment,” Mr Lux adds. “When a bar of soap is thrown away at the dump, rainwater will melt it into the soil and it will affect fertility. The chemicals can also flow into lakes and rivers, which affects biodiversity in water.”

ESB collects used soap from about 200 hotels and guesthouses in Siem Reap city and Phnom Penh. A team collects used soap once every one or two weeks. On average, the team can collect up to 500 kilogrammes each round.

ESB also collects used boxes, newspapers and clothes from supermarkets and hotels in Siem Reap and reuse them as soap packaging.

Keo Sokha, 40, a room attendant at Smiley Hotel in Siem Reap, says she and other room attendants collect soap for ESB.

Ms Sokha says doing so helps the environment, children and rural communities.

“We regularly replace soap every day. Some guests only use a little bit of the soap provided by the hotel so it would be a waste if the soap were thrown away,” she says. “If there is a place to take those used soap for recycling…we are happy to collect them.”

Earlier this year, the World Food Programme began supporting ESB by purchasing 100,000 bars of soap and distributing them to schools under their school meals programme.

WFP country director Francesca Erdelmann says aside from providing meals, WFP teaches children on how to properly wash their hands.

“It is very important for the school children to be able to wash their hand before they have their meal and also after,” she says.

“So this is a social programme implementation that we have, including the provision of nutritious food at schools and teaching children about hygiene practice through washing hands with recycled soap, which is also a part of promoting the environment in Cambodia,” she adds.

Neth Pheaktra, spokesman for the Environment Ministry, says his ministry encourages people to recycle goods, especially environmentally friendly items.

“The ministry encourages this recycling [initiative] because children in communities use [the soap],” Mr Pheaktra says. “It also contributes to the environment.”

ESB is currently planning to expand its operations in Phnom Penh and Banteay Meanchey, Svay Rieng and Preah Sihanouk provinces.

He says civil society organisations should help by supporting recycled soap and getting in touch with ESB to help.

“We want to encourage more production and use of recycled soap because once people use it, they will be interested in the environment they live in…which is part of improving the environment on our planet.”
https://www.khmertimeskh.com/50675539/h ... ommunities

It's not a new idea to recycle soap. I have been doing it for years. Saved lots of soap from when I owned a motel, now I put some in a bucket with water to desolve it, then strain it through a stocking and put it in pump containers for washing my hands.

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Cambodia,,,, Don't fall in love with her.
Like the spoilt child she is, she will not be happy till she destroys herself from within and breaks your heart.
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Re: Ethical businesses in Cambodia: Making money, helping people

Post by Duncan »

OK, you don't want to collect old soap, but if you had bought this 500 page book published in 1949 at the end of the war you would already know how to make soap and a thousand other things like cola drinks as an example.


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Cambodia,,,, Don't fall in love with her.
Like the spoilt child she is, she will not be happy till she destroys herself from within and breaks your heart.
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Re: Ethical businesses in Cambodia: Making money, helping people

Post by SternAAlbifrons »

I,ve had friends that do that, Dunc.
Do you live in a teepee and make your own candles too?

Yeah yeah i know, you are a Kiwi and we do practical sensible but still totally-mad things like that.
But it seems to work - we would never have co- conquered Everest if not for wearing those thick greezy-wool nz socks that itch like a case of the crabs.
Last edited by SternAAlbifrons on Sun Jul 19, 2020 9:28 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Ethical businesses in Cambodia: Making money, helping people

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SternAAlbifrons wrote: Sun Jul 19, 2020 9:17 am I,ve had friends that do that, Dunc.
Do you live in a teepee and make your own candles too?
1970,,, Been there Done that.
Spoiler:
OK, I lied about the Teepee
Cambodia,,,, Don't fall in love with her.
Like the spoilt child she is, she will not be happy till she destroys herself from within and breaks your heart.
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Re: Ethical businesses in Cambodia: Making money, helping people

Post by AndyKK »

Duncan wrote: Sun Jul 19, 2020 9:23 am
SternAAlbifrons wrote: Sun Jul 19, 2020 9:17 am I,ve had friends that do that, Dunc.
Do you live in a teepee and make your own candles too?
1970,,, Been there Done that.
Spoiler:
OK, I lied about the Teepee
Being resourceful and that of a recycler would put you in the cattogary of being an old hippy, not that there's any problem in that, it actually showed you thought and had concern about the environment at the time, but don't be shy, did you ever think of a teepee.
Always "hope" but never "expect".
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Re: Ethical businesses in Cambodia: Making money, helping people

Post by Duncan »

AndyKK wrote: Sun Jul 19, 2020 11:40 am
Duncan wrote: Sun Jul 19, 2020 9:23 am
SternAAlbifrons wrote: Sun Jul 19, 2020 9:17 am I,ve had friends that do that, Dunc.
Do you live in a teepee and make your own candles too?
1970,,, Been there Done that.
Spoiler:
OK, I lied about the Teepee
Being resourceful and that of a recycler would put you in the cattogary of being an old hippy, not that there's any problem in that, it actually showed you thought and had concern about the environment at the time, but don't be shy, did you ever think of a teepee.

I thought of building a Dome house in fero-cement , 25 feet high and diameter, two levels of floor , and even built a scale model of it about 1 m high . I had the land and space but a shortage of money was always the problem.







https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=Awr4xLC ... j_0GvOTY0-
Cambodia,,,, Don't fall in love with her.
Like the spoilt child she is, she will not be happy till she destroys herself from within and breaks your heart.
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Re: Ethical businesses in Cambodia: Making money, helping people

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Smateria: These Recycled Plastic Vegan Handbags Made By Artisan Khmer Women Help Prevent Carbon Emissions
By Sally Ho Published on Mar 31, 2021 Last updated Mar 30, 2021

5 Mins Read

How much does your handbag cost the planet?

Smateria, a Cambodia-based ethical women-founded fashion label, has launched its newest sustainable collection, this time made from a new recycled plastic manufacturing technology. Handmade in-house in their Phnom Penh workshop, which employs local women (they make up 80% of the workforce) and provide mothers with free on-site childcare and opportunities to build professional skills, the new exclusive IKI line takes the brand’s sustainable mission to the next level, transforming what would otherwise be left to pollute the environment into a new, durable, vegan-friendly bags and accessories.

Recycling waste and reducing air pollution

The result of “many years of research and experimentation”, Smateria’s latest collection, IKI, is the brand’s latest sustainable push with all fourteen items in the range made from its unique handmade fabric. From handbags to wallets and pouches, all the accessories in the line are created from an recycled material that undergoes a plastic-fusing method, using up industrial packaging waste that would otherwise be burned – a process releasing harmful toxins into the air.

“That’s what we like most at Smateria, turning waste into something unconventional and of high quality,” said the co-founders.

Each piece, designed with an Italian flair by the female founders of the brand, Jennifer Morellato and Elisa Lion, is then carefully hand-assembled by its team of Khmer artisans based in Phnom Penh. All fourteen pieces from the collection are now available to order online across Asia, Australia and New Zealand via their e-commerce platform, at Smateria’s physical stores and via the brand’s distribution network.

Know your handbag’s carbon emissions

While many brands have touted their products as sustainable to ride the latest trend taking over the fashion industry, Smateria is taking it further to be as transparent as possible with shoppers – each accessory in the collection is fitted with a unique number tag, detailing exactly how much plastic waste was recycled into the product, and the impact it has on the environment.

“This collection is like no other we have released before. It marks a meaningful turning point toward evermore refined production techniques for making fashion items from recycled plastic,” said Lion.

“We are now achieving this on a level of high-quality textures that are water-resistant, incredibly sturdy and smooth to the touch. As Smateria continues to evolve, the value to our customer continues to increase and we’re over the moon about entering this new chapter.”
Each product in the IKI Collection comes with a unique label showing its environmental impact

Morellato adds that this “special touch” caters to the increasing sophistication that consumers are now showing, as instances of greenwashing have become evermore apparent in the industry.

Together, Morellato and Lion have launched collections made from nylon net commonly used in Cambodia in construction fields, as well as products pieced together using upcycled leftover leather scraps sourced from sofa factories across Cambodia.

“Customers value transparency and they want to know what goes into their product. We’re committed to producing a collection that our customers could clearly see is a noteworthy investment,” she explains.

IKI is only the latest in the brand’s evolution to pioneer sustainable and ethical fashion. Since its inception back in 2006 – when conscious consumerism still remained a niche – the company’s business model has been centred on having a positive impact on the planet and people.

What an ethical supply chain actually looks like

Smateria’s ethical values shine through the most in its operations, which is a drastic contrast to the often harsh and unsafe conditions that many Cambodian garment workers face – an issue that has garnered greater global attention in recent months amid the coronavirus pandemic, which have left many already vulnerable workers without incomes due to forced closures.

“We have our own micro-factory which allows us to control the production process and conditions, to never compromise on quality and to provide decent human working conditions,” explains Morellato and Lion.

As a women-led business, the company not only offers decent working hours capped at a 8-hour workday in a 5-day working week, competitive wages, double maternity benefits and family support leaves, they also offer their 80% female workforce free childcare and education at its on-site preschool.

Employees also benefit from professional development, from training for production managers and pattern makers to English lessons and even Chinese classes for sales teams.

“We challenge the glass ceiling by ensuring all our staff have equal opportunities to grow and develop within their roles,” says the company. “Today, Smateria is a thriving ethical brand and we are proud of our journey.”

This is a Green Queen Media partner post.
https://www.greenqueen.com.hk/smateria- ... emissions/
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