Reuse of cooking oil in the manufacture of soap for cleaning, seeking to minimize environmental pollution. This was the proposal of three students and a teacher from the Centro Educativo Joaquín José Vallarino, located in Mariato, district in Veraguas, Panama. With the most diverse aromas and textures – coffee, orange, lemon, oats, for example – soap not only started to be used by the school but also became a proposal for financial and environmental sustainability in the community.
The initiative, which was named Aceibon, was born from a proposal by English teacher Xenia Vigil, who has part of her workload at the school dedicated to supervising and mentoring students, accompanying them in their studies and their life projects. Upon receiving the invitation to participate in the program, Xenia decided to present the proposal to her group of 22 mentees, with whom she meets once a week. Engaged with the initiative, two students, also living at school, approached the teacher interested in participating in the proposal. Along with a colleague who decided to join the project, the group started the Design Thinking process, stimulated by Samsung Solve for Tomorrow.
“I did not understand anything about STEM. It wasn’t my area, but I was sure that together, with the support of other teachers, we could learn and develop a proposal”, explains Xenia. In addition to the 40 minutes of weekly meetings in her regular classes with the students, she dedicated a good part of her planning time at school to the group. “And when I got home, and the students were already at home or boarding school, we continued communicating online,” adds, impressed with the dedication and involvement of young people in the process. From the beginning, the teens emphasized that they wanted to develop something that would benefit the local community and indicated a great interest in preserving the environment. The region, which is rich in natural resources and home to paradisiacal beaches, is also one of the most remote and least served by public resources.
It was by investigating the territory and sharing ideas that the group arrived at the problem of domestic pollution and its contribution to environmental pollution. Among the problems listed was the improper disposal of cooking oil: 1.5l of the substance contaminates an average of 6l of water. Discarded down the sink, for example, oil directly contaminates aquifers, creating a waterproofing layer in the water, preventing oxygenation, and directly affecting the photosynthesis process and the development of the local fauna and flora.
It was then that Xenia’s mother, upon hearing the group’s concerns about the issue from the teacher, remembered making soap from oil. The teacher then took the idea to the group that not only liked the proposal but sought to qualify it, thinking about how to improve its composition so that it could also be used safely for cleaning hands, due to hygiene issues personnel that gained greater evidence with the Covid-19 pandemic.
The process of ideation and subsequent prototyping involved consulting different sources and studying everything from the composition of the soaps to the chemical process of saponification. “The first tests were a disaster”, jokes the teacher, remembering that it was necessary to adjust the temperature, then ensure adequate ventilation, adjusting the size of the cylinder for mixing the ingredients. With the base soap ready, and with the support of the chemistry teacher, the safety and quality tests began, evaluating the pH and foam formation, for example.
And then, they started adding different fragrances and textures, seeking to improve the quality of the product, making it more interesting for consumption. “We evaluated everything you can imagine. We had several hits and others that did not turn out as we imagined. The oatmeal and coffee were wonderful! When washing clothes, they are spectacular, and they are excellent for hand washing”, she celebrates. For each aroma, texture, or dye used, new tests were performed. With the approved parameters, the soaps started to be used in the school and boarding school sinks and to clean fabrics — without any case of allergy.
Innovations: automated mixer and in-process scale
As the saponification process requires a step of mixing the ingredients and as the students worked with enormous amounts of oil, it became impossible to mix everything by hand, with a broom handle. With the support of the school janitor and the group members who understood more about engineering, and as they advanced through the stages of Samsung Solve for Tomorrow, they were able to buy a motor from a used washing machine and build an automated mixing arm that allowed for greater agility and scale to the process. The machine was also detachable and could be taken to different areas of the school. “This was a necessity, as we needed to follow the process closely, on weekends, between classes,” explains Xenia.
Next, the group began to develop soaps in different formats, using cookie molds and wrapping the soaps in the biodegradable manila paper. “Later, they developed the logo, but they needed to make sure it wasn’t put on a sticker or printed on paper at an environmental cost. That’s when they came up with the idea for the stamp,” narrates the teacher.
To meet the demand, and as the oil collected in the school cafeteria was not enough, the youths left for the territory, starting a simultaneous campaign to collect the base material and raise people’s awareness. Xenia says that when they were getting ready to go out into the community, they found an old Solve for Tomorrow banner at school. “And the 2019 poster ended up becoming our promotional and dialogue material with the community”, she says.
Earnings and possibilities
With the support of the program’s mentoring, the young people also created a business sustainability plan. Those who donated oil won a soap. The rest were used at school and the remainder was sold. “I supported them to conduct an analysis and price the product, seeking that it could become a sustainable project,” explains the teacher.
For the teacher, the project not only allowed youths to develop new skills, especially soft ones, such as communication, collaboration, and problem-solving, but she was able to develop new opportunities to work as a teacher. “I’m sure I became a better teacher. In addition to learning a lot about science, chemistry, physics, and engineering, I had the opportunity to get to know my students better, to think creatively with them, to listen to them, and to overcome challenges next to them”, she celebrates. The group’s idea is to continue Aceibon, involving new students and community members. With the program’s support, Xenia intends to seek testing and comply with the official regulation of soaps so that they can even be used for bathing.
As Solve for Tomorrow finalists (and the first in the region) Xenia also says that the school gained a greater capacity for dialogue with local authorities, focusing on expanding resources for local education and in the country. Among the teachers’ concerns is that of creating more opportunities for students in the province to continue studying. “They live far away and need support to continue in higher education”, argues the teacher.
