A hard-water laundry bar made from banana waste, in Kabuyanda, by the community that grows it.
In Isingiro District, banana is the backbone of rural life. Farmers spend months tending a plantation, then watch harvest season collapse the price of a whole bunch to less than a dollar. The peel, the part nobody wants, is left to rot in the compound.
Jukye BananaPak buys that peel. We burn it to ash, and we turn the ash into a laundry bar built for the hard water rural households actually wash in. The farmer earns from what she used to throw away. The neighbour makes it. The household buys it. The value never leaves the village.
Every batch is cut, stamped and packed by hand in Kabuyanda, from peel collected within a few kilometres of the workshop.
In production
Our core product. A long bar made from East African Highland Banana peel ash, formulated for the hard water rural households wash in.
In production
The same bar, sleeved and boxed for shops, market traders and the young people who distribute for us across the district.
In development
A second line from the same supply chain. Green banana, peeled, dried and milled. We are proving the unit economics before we sell at scale.
We produce at the source, in Kabuyanda, using peel collected nearby. Keeping manufacturing in the village is what keeps the price reachable and the value in the community that created it.
Rural women and young people run the production line, from collection through cutting, stamping and packing. They learn a trade at home rather than leaving to look for one in the city.
Peel that would decompose in a compound or a landfill becomes the raw material for something a household needs every week. Nothing is wasted, and that is not a slogan, it is the supply chain.
Farmers gain a buyer for a material that had no market. Households gain a bar that lasts. Our customers know the women who made it and the farmers whose peel became the ash.
Five steps, all of them inside the same community.
Farmers set aside the peel instead of leaving it to rot. We collect and pay for it.
Peel is dried and burned to ash, then worked into the bar and cured.
Bars are cut to length, stamped, sleeved and cased by the production team.
Young people from the district carry stock to households, shops and traders.
Money reaches the farmer, the maker and the seller, and stays in Isingiro.
Consistency is the floor everything else stands on. In a community where word travels faster than any advertisement, one bad batch ends relationships that took years to build, so every batch is made to the same standard and checked against it.
A social enterprise built to pay its own way. Every decision has to serve the community that built us, and sustain itself without permanent grants.
Our raw material is agricultural waste. Growing the business means diverting more of it, not extracting more from the land.
We were built inside the community we serve, which is why farmers, women and young people trust us with their time and their harvest.
“The truth is your soap is the best. I still have a bar left since last month. Send more.”
Whether you are a customer, a distributor, a partner organisation or a potential collaborator, we would like to hear from you.