Honduras’s scheme turns culinary oil into soap and dog food

Few 27-year-old children look at used culinary oils and see green business for soap or dog food.

But this is what Hugo Daniel Chavez, project manager for NGO Sustenta Honduras.

“We have so many businesses and internal practices that create waste, so we try to convert the waste and give it a second life,” he says.

In Latin America, several million tons of culinary oil are consumed every year. Often it is used for frying food, mostly chicken, plantain, chips and pork.

But re -use and heating it too often – as is often the case in Honduras, where there is a huge black market for used culinary oil – can create compounds that are poorly for consumer health.

Improperly thrown, it can also have a large -scale detrimental effect on the environment.

When it is fused on the sink, it can damage the pipes and pollute the underground water, and if it is thrown to the side of the road, it can pollute fresh water and on the crop, which many communities rely.

Faced with these dangers in the health and environment, young green entrepreneurs who are behind the sides tried to come up with a decision that would not only give the enterprise the incentive to dispose of oil and properly grease, but also turn these waste into something useful.

NGO Executive Director Ricardo Preded explains that their idea arose from the previous efforts of various companies and organizations to transform the used culinary oil into bioadiesel. “But in Honduras we have no market for bioadiesel,” he says.

“So we decided to produce products that can work well in our domestic markets (such as soap and dog food).”

In order to make it more attractive to people to get rid of oil rather than sell it unscrupulous buyers, Sustenta offers to buy used culinary oil and regularly collect it in the stores involved in their project.

Their efforts have received international recognition, first of all, when they were awarded $ 20,000 as one of the winners of the 2023 Youth4Climate Energy Challenge, the World Initiative of the Italian Government and the United Nations Development Program.

Sustenta also receives funding from the Netherlands Embassy in the region in which the BBC chose Sustenta because “their project offered an innovative and viable solution using the enterprising approach that has social influence.”

“This (their project) not only contributes to the reduction of environmental impact due to the accent on the creation of a circular economy, but also gives the opportunity for young people and women – groups who have been most affected by climate change – and create green work.”

Sustenta offers from 2.50 to 3.50 lampir (0.08 and £ 0.11) per pound used culinary oil.

And it’s not just a small business.

In May 2024, NGOs signed a contract with the Mexican and Central American Retail Giant Walmart.

This contract guarantees the flow of used culinary oil and lubrication from all Walmart companies to Sustenta, which, according to D -Pineta, is crucial for the SUSTENTA project.

“We needed a reliable flow to increase production.

Then it brings culinary oil and grease the plant in Kamaagua, where they are cleaned and treated in a reaction known as saponification. This process combines fats or alkali oil to produce soap.

Mr. Pinet says that the sofa seeks to develop a “circular environmental system in which we all re -use.”

“Next to our factory that produces soap and dog food, someone else has a plant to clean water, and we use water that the plant cannot clean, its waste so as to say for our water cooling system,” he explains.

The idea to unite with Walmart, says Mr. Pinet, is to “sell food for dogs and soaps that we specified from their waste in Walmart.”

“They could make a profit from their own waste, as well as see the economic value behind the circular economy,” he says BBC.

In 15 Lampira (0.45 pounds) per bar soap, the project brings monthly earnings of more than 106,000 lepeis (3194.70 pounds), which eliminates fixed expenses such as wages, commission and distribution.

Mr. Preded emphasizes that “money is not left with us”. “We just help the project implementation, and as soon as it works and works, we are looking for new opportunities,” he says.

The processing of culinary oil is only one more projects that work at the same time in the mound.

The organization consists of young people, all under 30 and on average 23 years, and their youth enthusiasm and impatience to the set methods were key to their approach.

“We started as a young group that became ill with the usual ways to solve the problems with climate change and the environment,” Mr. Pinet says.

“We want to create real decisions and not sit, just talking about what you can do.”

Their strategy is also different from the strategy of other young environmental organizations in the region, which are often focused on a confrontational approach, trying to stop big mining or energy projects and bring politicians accountable for corruption.

But the SUSTENTA project coordinator, Paolo Pala, says that they are not suitable, but rather complement each other: “This type (classic) environmentalism is very important, and there is no doubt that we need it.”

“We try to focus on decisions, and the rest are fighting on the front,” she adds.