While staying at hotels you have to wash your hands at some point, and unless you are washing your hands every three minutes you won’t use the entire bar of soap. It’s replaced every day at many places, and five-star resorts replace your soap daily even if you don’t use it! What happens to that soap after a couple of uses?
You guys. After all of the negative travel-related news in the last week it made me SO HAPPY to see something positive in my inbox. My awesome friend Sally from Century Travel sent me a story from Thrillist about a company solving this exact problem called Clean the World. They are doing such an incredible thing: taking used hotel soap, recycling it, and sending it to parts of the world that desperately need it.
Clean the World works with hotels like the Disney resorts, training housekeeping staff and collecting used or unneeded toiletries. They melt down the soap and reform it, then assemble hygiene kits that are distributed to areas of need. To distribute they partner with organizations around the world, targeting maternal health programs, schools, community health providers, and nutrition programs.
This hits hard at two things I’m passionate about: reducing waste and saving kids’ lives. If you’d like to learn more about this incredible program or see who their top recycling partners are please visit their website, CleantheWorld.org.
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I prefer to cut out the middle man. I just take my leftover soap, head out to the streets, then give baths to homeless people.
Seriously, I find it hard to believe that value out of this endeavor would exceed the time, resources and energy it takes to collect, recycle, ship, and distribute used soap to those in need, unless the recipients are all in the local community. Soap has been around for thousands of years, it is not a resource that is beyond the reach of even primitive cultures. I’m glad it made you feel good reading about it though, as it seems that feeling good is all that this project achieves.