Naga Earth is a local non-profit organisation created in 2008 by Tim Waterfield with the mission of protecting the environment and supporting the community by recycling used oil into clean-burning biodiesel and environmentally friendly soaps. This idea came after his six-month solo bicycling trip around Southeast Asia in 2001. That journey through the villages and towns of several countries laid the seed for what became Naga Earth.
What do they do?
During Tim’s trip to Cambodia, he found that there was a distinct lack of ethical recycling projects in the country. An idea began to take shape and he brought his skills in recycling used cooking oil into clean-burning diesel in Colorado could easily be brought over to Cambodia.
During the years, Naga Earth has expanded the recycling project to include plastic and paper. It built the first working Precious Plastic shredding and moulding machines in Cambodia with help from French engineers. The organization also decided to offer free recycling workshops to schools, NGOs and businesses to educate Cambodians about local environmental issues and to demonstrate recycling projects.
Naga Earth also noted persistent health issues affecting the local population in Siem Reap, as they do not have access to soap, which represent around one-third of all households in the city. This is why they decided to produce a foaming hand soap made from coconut oil and distribute it free to nonprofits throughout Cambodia. A Community Soap Program was launched for NGOs to take part in and hand soap out to the people they serve.
As the well-being of the population is important, they decided to extend their range of cleaning products and to make them available to businesses.
EXO Foundation support
With the objective to replicate the initiative of the Reform Center in Vietnam, we are supporting Naga Earth in Cambodia to create affordable and low technology plastic recycling machines, enabling a second chance for plastic waste in Siem Reap. This new project has a strong potential to become self-sustainable and to complete the sustainable solutions offered by Naga Earth.