What happens to those little bars of soap in many hotel rooms?  Specifically, what occurs after a guest opens a carefully packaged bar and uses it?  Most guests often do not use all of it.  Some wrap it back up and take it; most leave it for housekeeping.  I have mostly seen the latter; and having some experience in housekeeping operations now, I am shocked at the amount of amenities that are thrown to overflowing landfills every day.  However, my anxiety about this abundance of waste was reduced slightly when I stumbled upon a small, not for profit organization, Clean the World Foundation, Inc., that collects these gently used bars of soap and recycles them to distribute amongst several developing countries and underprivileged communities.

According to Clean the World, millions of pounds of soaps are discarded each day in North America.  These bars not only get wasted and take up space in an overflowing landfill, but they also contribute to groundwater contamination.  And while these soaps are wasting away, Clean the World states, “Impoverished people around the world die every day from acute respiratory infection and diarrheal disease because they have no soap.  The death toll is staggering. Each year more than five million lives are lost to these diseases with the majority of deaths being among children less than five years old. Studies have shown that simple hand washing substantially reduces the spread of these diseases. Unfortunately, the essential items for proper hand washing are unobtainable for millions of people worldwide.”

The organization has developed a way to recycle and sanitize the used hotel soaps and shampoos.  They reform the soap in a re-batching process and then distribute it to different parts of the world.  They have also established many partnerships to collect the little bars.  Clean the World provides education and bins for the partner’s housekeeping staff to learn how collecting the soaps benefits their fellow humanity.  It is a win-win situation: hospitality businesses can support their corporate social responsibility and impoverished societies can increase their hygiene and public health.

Foundations such as Clean the World have focused on transforming one small, wasteful product, amenity soap, into a huge project that decreases environmental impact and gives back to communities.  So, the next time you check into a hotel, consider those “fun size” soap bars and suggest to the hotel to invest in a recycling program if they have not already.  Here is one of those rare cases where a huge lose-lose can be transformed into a spectacular win-win, and since Clean the World has already organized it we just need to support it as consumers and hoteliers.