Gallery
The range, the team, the trees.
Photographs from the factory and the field — our products, our people, and the day the whole team went out planting for Ethiopia’s Green Legacy. Select any image to view it full size.
Green Legacy · የአረንጓዴ አሻራ
Adoleessa 22, 2011.
That is the date on the banner our team carried — the 22nd of Adoleessa, 2011 in the Ethiopian calendar, which is 29 July 2019. The day Ethiopia set out to plant 200 million tree seedlings and planted more than 350 million.
The banner reads Warshaa Saamunaa fi Ditarjantii Kompaanii Colas — the Colas Soap and Detergent Factory — and underneath, imala gara misooma magariisaatti: the journey toward green development. It was raised at Chancho, in Oromia, north of Addis Ababa, by staff who had spent the previous day on the production line.
The Green Legacy Initiative was launched that year by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to restore degraded land, slow soil erosion and expand forest cover. What began as one record-breaking day is now an annual campaign through the rains — and one Colas keeps showing up for.
Why a soap factory plants trees. Soap-making runs on water and on agricultural feedstock. Watersheds that hold their soil, and land that keeps growing things, are not a side interest for this industry — they are the supply chain.
The Colas Green Legacy banner — Chancho, Oromia, Adoleessa 22, 2011 EC (29 July 2019).
Photo story
From the factory floor to the hillside.
353M
Seedlings in 12 hours, 29 July 2019
48B+
Seedlings planted since 2019
25M
Citizens mobilised each year, on average
23.6%
Forest cover, up from about 17%
National figures for the Green Legacy Initiative as reported by the Government of Ethiopia and the UN Environment Programme. Colas Industry is one of many participating organisations and does not claim these totals.
The range
KK, SKOR and OSCAR.
Product photography for the three flagship laundry bars and the cartons they ship in.
In the home
Quality clean. Ethiopian choice.
Colas soaps where they belong — at the basin, on the line, on the shop shelf.
Work with us
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