Eco‑Friendly Kits for Back‑to‑School Drives: An Interview with Lydia, a Refugee Support Coordinator

How Nonprofits Build Sustainable Hygiene Programs for Seasonal Community Needs

Sustainable Hygiene Kits Matter in September

The back‑to‑school August rush brings seasonal community needs to the forefront. Fall drives for school supplies, hygiene kits, and toiletries for at‑risk students are central to the work many nonprofits do to support their communities in the coming school year. These drives are also a key way nonprofits make connections with families who may be in need of their services: hosting a hygiene kit drive on high school orientation night can catch students who need support.

These drives provide a real service to families, but they also produce a lot of waste. In general, the amenity industry — especially travel‑sized amenities — struggles to push forward eco‑friendly options. Among nonprofits and schools, however, replacing single‑use plastics and products with harmful chemicals is becoming central to their mission… and the amenity space is responding in kind.

Meet Lydia, a composite character created from common experiences shared by refugee‑support coordinators and nonprofit workers. Her perspective reflects real challenges and best practices observed across community organizations preparing for fall hygiene drives. This August, we shaped a conversation through her lens — a lively, energetic nonprofit worker supporting refugee families as they settle into U.S. life — to highlight practical sustainability, cultural sensitivity, and hands-on community work.

Lydia’s Work & Mission

SB: Lydia, can you tell us about your role at the nonprofit and what back‑to‑school season looks like for the families you serve?

Lydia: I am a refugee support coordinator, which means that my main focus is welcoming refugee families into housing, school districts, and jobs. “Welcoming” is not typically thought of as a job task… but it really is the best word to describe what I do. Welcoming includes so many different kinds of work, but one central aspect, especially during the back‑to‑school season, is making sure families arriving with limited resources have access to school supplies, hygiene items, and other necessities that make the school days smoother, like snacks.

My organization runs annual fall drives where we assemble back‑to‑school kits for families in our county. Over the years, we have seen how these kits really meet a practical need for new families (in addition to offering a warm welcome to them as newcomers!), but we have also seen how these kits highlight some cultural and practical challenges around waste, reuse, and sustainability.

The Sustainability Turning Point

SB: What made you rethink the types of hygiene kits your organization was distributing?

Lydia: Many refugees arrive here from countries that either have a very ineffective or inefficient waste‑management system, or whose waste management has been completely derailed by war and conflict. Their relationship with waste and how to handle trash is very different from ours.

One day a few years into running this program, I remember thinking, “I can’t keep handing out things that create more problems.” Non-biodegradable items were creating waste burdens for families still learning U.S. waste systems. There were times I would do home visits and find the empty mini shampoo bottles that we had given them thrown away in the backyard instead of thrown into the recycling bin.

We wanted to keep giving away amenities, but knew we needed to account for the waste challenge, so we made sustainability a part of our cultural education work with refugee families. Our amenity kit drives offer us the opportunity to not only give away shampoo, first‑aid basics, and hygiene kits as foundational tools for new arrivals, but also provide some education on sustainability expectations in the U.S.

Hands‑On Sustainability Education

SB: How do you teach sustainability to families who may come from very different waste‑management cultures?

Lydia: Like with everything we do, we organize volunteers to provide hands-on demonstrations. The families we work with come from all over the world, and often speak languages that we don’t have easy translation access to. By making every training a physical demonstration, we can use translation apps for support, but don’t have to overly rely on them to convey meaning.

In this case, we have multiple stations at every fall drive where we actively show how to sort trash, recycle, and reuse certain items according to U.S. labels and processes. We design the stations so that families can jump in and practice.

Specifically, some of the stations we have had over the last few years include showing families how to repurpose hygiene kits and refill containers, and training neighborly behavior and care for shared spaces, especially green spaces.

We’ve actually had a huge response to these stations not just from our refugee families, but from families who have lived their whole lives in the U.S. as well! There’s a lot to know when it comes to trash and recycling — and every community is different. We could all use a refresher on sustainable practices once a year!

Building Eco‑Friendly Back‑to‑School Kits

SB: What does a sustainable back‑to‑school hygiene kit look like for your organization?

Lydia: These days, we try to have as many biodegradable items in our kits as possible; however, there are limitations to what we can reasonably access and use. Given these limitations, our focus is on how to manage waste well — with a heavy focus on trash management and recycling.

We try to provide kits for every member of the family:

• Adults/Parents

• Cleaning Kits

• OTC Medication Kits

• Infants/Toddlers

• Essentials Kit

• Diapers

• Pacifiers

• Children 5–10

• Toiletries

• Snacks

• Children 10–18

• Grooming Kits

• Feminine Care Kits

• Tech Kits

Advice for Other Nonprofits & Schools

SB: What would you tell other organizations preparing for fall hygiene drives?

Lydia: Start small: swapping even just one amenity at a time for an eco‑friendly version, or including even the most basic informational demonstration about how to recycle in your community still makes an impact. There is always room to grow, so there is no shame in starting small! The easiest first steps for any organization are:

• Choosing items families can reuse.

• Thinking about cultural education as part of sustainability.

• Partnering with suppliers who understand nonprofit needs and seasonal programs.

Ultimately, eco‑friendly kits strengthen trust with families and center sustainability not only as a value that we hold here in the U.S., but also as a part of welcoming newcomers into community life. In some ways, sustainability offers a beautiful parallel to the global nature of refugee crises everywhere: we are all human, we all deserve dignity, and the earth belongs to all of us — we share a duty to protect and care for it, no matter what our background or circumstances may be. Joining together to care for the earth actually functions to restore dignity and control to those who have lost it to difficult circumstances. Everyone can make a difference.