Central Ohio soap co-op — shared food-grade fleet

The Central Ohio Soap Collective is a loose group of eleven small soap and personal-care makers. None of them needed a full-time tote fleet; all of them needed occasional access to food-grade rebottled totes for glycerin, surfactants, and base oils.

We helped them set up a shared 30-tote fleet, rebottled, marked with the co-op's logo. Members reserve totes through a shared calendar; finished-with totes come back to our yard for a 7-step wash and re-cert. Cost is split per-use across the membership.

Two years in, the co-op estimates the shared model saves them $22k/yr versus everyone buying new totes individually. It also created a kind of mutual standard — every member knows their input drum is a known-clean, traceable tote.

We mention this case a lot when other co-ops or maker collectives ask about pooling tote inventory. The model works.