Soap Aid Launches Camp to Community, Bringing Soap Recycling to Remote and Indigenous Communities
by Soap Aid 29/07/2026
A Sustainability Journey, News
by Soap Aid 29/07/2026
A Sustainability Journey, News
This article was contributed by Soap Aid.
Soap Aid has launched Camp to Community, a hard soap recycling programme built for camp and village accommodation in the resources sector. The programme was developed with Woollahra Group, a 100% Indigenous-owned, Supply Nation Certified business, alongside Sodexo and Rio Tinto.Â
Camp to Community is a closed-loop recycling solution built specifically for camp and village accommodation. It brings together sustainable procurement, waste recovery, and community impact in one service, developed with industry leaders across the resources sector.
Camp and village sites procure Soap Aid’s Healthy Hands amenity soap bars through Woollahra Group. Once the soap has been used on-site, the leftover soap bars are collected rather than discarded, then transported to Soap Aid’s recycling facilities, cleaned, processed, and remade into new hygienic bars. Those recycled bars are donated to Soap Aid’s Community Impact Partners, who redistribute them to remote and Indigenous communities across Australia and overseas, alongside hygiene education, supporting improved hygiene and health outcomes.
Soap Aid frames the programme around three outcome areas:
It’s designed to bring circular economy thinking into complex, high-volume environments that traditional waste management hasn’t reached, turning everyday soap waste into a measurable health and environmental outcome. Existing participants beyond the founding partners include Santos, Civeo, Fortescue, Compass Group Australia, Liontown, and Endurance Mining.
The programme didn’t launch at full scale. It began as a trial at a single Sodexo-operated site, where more than 3,897 kilograms of soap were collected for recycling within the first few months.
That result was enough to expand the programme across Sodexo’s Pilbara operations: 23 Sodexo-managed mining camps are now participating, and since the start of the year those sites have collected more than 4,600 kilograms of soap, enough to produce over 46,000 recycled bars.
That soap has already reached the ground. Camp to Community has delivered free recycled soap and hygiene education materials to communities across the Pilbara region, working with organisations including the Central Australian Aboriginal Congress and Puntukurnu Aboriginal Medical Service to distribute supplies through local community networks. The programme is scheduled to expand further into mining camps in Queensland and South Australia.
The timing matters. Good360’s 2024–25 research found that more than 4 million Australians are experiencing hygiene poverty, worried they won’t be able to afford basic hygiene items, at the same time as business donations of hygiene products have dropped by 43 per cent.
Camp to Community is a direct response to that gap, turning soap that would otherwise be thrown out in remote work camps into a supply line for communities that are going without.
The collaboration has also drawn recognition from within the resources sector itself. Rio Tinto awarded the Woollahra, Soap Aid, and Sodexo partnership Environmental Sustainability Award at the 2026 Rio Tinto Supplier Recognition Awards, for its contribution to reducing emissions and supporting reuse and recycling.
In May 2026, Soap Aid also announced its first athlete ambassador programme, welcoming Olympian Katie Ebzery, professional surfer Sophie McCulloch, and elite racewalker Rhydian Cowley, through a partnership with Athletes for Hope Australia, to raise awareness of hygiene access.