Still Smart: Powering a Greener Hawai'i

By Sam Braden

The North Shore Soap Factory is located within what was two of the island's largest recycling containers, where the Waialua Sugar Mill, born in 1898, stored "bagasse", or the leftover plant material from sugar cane, and then burned it to run not only the mill, but annually sending over $1 million back into the power grid and giving electricity to the entire North Shore until 1998!

Just like how the old sugar mill recycled the reusable assets at hand for almost 100 years, it's a passion of North Shore Soap Factory's Jerry Driscoll of finding significant sources of alternative energy, "not just slapping solar panels on the roof and saying, 'We're Green.'"

On August 5th of this year, the North Shore Soap Factory will be celebrating its 5-year anniversary from when the company began with green ambitions. According to Jerry, he and his wife fell in love with natural skin care products many years ago, and when the company that they went to for natural soap went out of business, "There was no way Deb and I were going to go without it."

The North Shore Soap Factory's story is of a family business doing it right. Through their guarantee of high quality, locally grown and organic ingredients, and the use of packaging made out of recycled materials, they make soap that is soothing for both your body and the environment, beginning from the environmentally friendly production of the soap, to the moment it refreshes and invigorates your skin, and ending with a biodegradable, non-toxic return to the sea. As Jerry says, "The ocean has no choice in our ignorance," so please, get clean and go green.

Welcome to the North Shore Soap Factory

You can view the soap making room while you shop!