I thought about how I could personally bring the Sachet Recovery Project to my dormitory in Manila.  Dormitories are a great place to find a group of people who will listen to new initiatives because:  (1) most of the people are young, creative and advocates of one cause or another, (2) they all live under one roof and get to exchange ideas a lot, (3) being mostly students, sachets is something they use since they are on an allowance and always on a budget.

This is why I decided to go around our dorm, which houses about 70 college students and young professionals, and explain the Sachet Recovery Project (SRP) on Earth Day. SRP is collecting used sachets of shampoos, soaps, conditioners, detergents and toothpaste. These are recycled by Unilever Philippines into ecobricks in the Materials Recovery Facility and returned to the community that collected the sachets. For every 170 kilos of sachets, they get 1000 pieces of ecobricks.

 I visited the rooms, especially common areas with my laptop.  I didn't tire of explaining the concept over and over again that night.  For me it was a chance for my friends to hear about my advocacy to protect the environment.

There were some questions, but since the project was simple and empty sachets are just trash, it was easy for my dormmates to give me used sachets and to pledge that from now on they will save up their used sachets and I can collect them. Since they don't really need the bricks, they were willing for me to take it home and add it up to the collection by the public school children so that the ecobricks can be used for renovations and landscaping their schools.

I think, I will continue promoting this project in other dormitories around our University. I'm sure the other students will be just as willing to give me their used sachets and not just throw them into the trash cans where they add up in the landfill.