Cleveland-made soap wins international green product award in Berlin
Cleveland resident Ruth Avvy Capapas put her plant-based soap on a Berlin stage, winning one of 36 Green Product Awards from more than 1,200 entries.
A Cleveland-made soap earned international recognition in Berlin, giving Ruth “Avvy” Capapas and Bebot Simple Soaps a bigger platform in the sustainability market. The Green Product Award named Bebot Simple Soap a finalist in its 2026 competition, and the prize was presented May 28 in Berlin after a field of more than 1,200 entries from around the world.
White Lobster, the German company behind the awards, has run the Green Product Award since 2013 as an international challenge for sustainable design and concepts. This year’s result put a small Mississippi business in a global contest that drew only 36 recipients, an unusually narrow path for a Cleveland product to break through. For Capapas, the recognition could help push the brand beyond local sales toward wider retail interest and stronger visibility in a crowded clean-beauty market.
Bebot Simple Soap is described as a 100% plant-based bathing soap designed to neutralize body odor without deodorants that contain heavy metal salts. The award page says the formula is patent-pending, with USPTO dating referenced as July 2024, and positions the soap as an alternative for adults, pregnant women, the elderly and kids in puberty. Capapas said the product is also intended to help people dealing with skin conditions such as eczema, turning the business into a niche solution rather than a general novelty item.
The soap’s local story is tied to Capapas’ own background. She said the formula was inspired by her upbringing in the Philippines, where plants from the yard and natural remedies were part of everyday life. She began testing the soap on herself after living with a chronic skin condition since her teens and said the product helped when nothing else did. Bebot Simple Soap says its formula uses real plant ingredients including organic papaya, organic coconut, olive oil, coconut oil, a creamy coconut fragrance oil and lye solution, and the company says it is made in Mississippi and sold online and at a local farmers market.
Capapas has already started building momentum beyond Berlin. She said Bebot Simple Soap was a semifinalist in Whole Foods Market’s 2025 LEAP Program, where she said 1,600 brand companies competed and her business ranked in the top 8 percent of applicants. Whole Foods Market says LEAP, launched in 2022, is designed to help local and emerging suppliers through education and mentorship, and applications for the 2026 cycle opened June 2. For Cleveland, the bigger takeaway is simple: a homegrown soap brand is now competing for shelf space and consumer attention far beyond Mississippi.
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