What Happens to Your Half-Used Hotel Soap? Now, It Could Save Lives 

It’s the end of your vacation and you’re packing up all of your belongings from your hotel room. You head into the bathroom to collect your things, and see that little collection of untouched or barely used soaps by the sink. Do you grab them? Or do you leave them behind? For those of us that leave it behind, what becomes of that soap, or the half used bar left in the shower? 

This was a question that, up until recently, I chose to remain ignorant to. My guilt at adding to the 1788.5 pounds of garbage the average American creates a year ¹ weighed heavily on my composting, tote bag using, waste reducing conscience. (After writing this article, I’ve been living a more low-waste lifestyle as much as possible). 

It turns out, though, like most of the problems we face today, somebody has a solution. In this case, somebody has figured out how to turn those leftover soap scraps into a win-win for hotels, the environment, and parents who are trying to keep their kids safe and healthy around the world.

A Wasted Resource that Could Save Millions of Lives

Every day in the United States, 2 million bars of hotel soap make their way into landfills. ² This volume of waste is already astonishing, but when combined with soap’s life-saving abilities the scale of this waste becomes all the more astonishing. Around the world 3 billion people  around the globe lack access to handwashing facilities with soap. ³ Soap that could prevent the deaths of up to 1 million people every year ⁴.

So, what can be done to bridge the divide between the wasted resource of soap and those who need it? Enter, Clean the World.

Since 2009, Clean the World has been recycling soap from hotel partners, collecting, sanitizing, and remolding it into bars that are distributed around the world. To date, they have diverted 23 million pounds of soap from landfills, from over 8,100 partners, turning it into 70 million bars of soap that have been delivered to over 127 countries ⁵.

Seeing a Problem, Creating a Win-Win

The idea for Clean the World came to founder Shawn Seipler while he was working a job that had him staying in hotel rooms 150 days out of the year. On one of these trips he thought to himself “What happens to the soap I leave behind?” Curious, he called down to the front desk and learned that the leftover bars were just getting tossed in the garbage ⁶. Doing some quick math, he estimated that meant over 1 million bars were ending up in the trash every day.

And so in 2009, in a one car garage with some friends, he started Clean the World. Experimenting with ways to clean, sanitize, and reshape used soap bars, they eventually reached a process that allowed them to produce 25,000-30,000 bars of soap on a daily basis ⁷.

What happens to all those bars they create from the “recycled” soap? They are distributed to people around the globe, helping to advance the UN Sustainable Development Goals that call for universal access to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) by 2030. Clean the World soap bars have served over 15 million people in 127 countries worldwide, from individuals experiencing homelessness in the US, to refugee and disaster relief efforts, to mothers in homes around the globe who want to keep their kids safe and healthy ⁸.  

So how do used soap bars get collected, sorted, sanitized, and make their way around the world? Here’s a great piece from NowThis Earth that explains the ins and outs of this amazing process!

If you want more examples of remarkable innovations and fascinating insights that are a win for the planet and for people, make sure you check out NowThis Earth’s YouTube channel for more great videos. 

Soap can change the world!

Most of us take things like soap for granted, but here are a few statistics from UNICEF that help put the scarcity of soap and water around the globe into perspective ¹⁰:

• 2 in 5 people around the world lack basic handwashing facilities.
• 47% of schools around the world lack facilities with water and soap–that’s 900 million children.
• 16% of healthcare facilities lack hand hygiene facilities, including soap and water at toilets.

Soap and water are the front line in keeping people–particularly children–healthy. Around the world, 1.4 million children die each year from preventable causes like pneumonia and diarrheal diseases, ¹¹ the first and third leading causes of child mortality globally ¹². Studies have found that handwashing with soap and water can reduce the risk of respiratory illnesses like pneumonia by 16-21%, and diarrheal disease by up to 50%. ¹³. So, when it comes to keeping children from dying and keeping our global population safe, soap really is a hero of the hygiene world.

If you want to learn more about the Clean the World Foundation–the non-profit arm of Clean the World that distributes soap and also runs hygiene programs, head over to their website. There, you’ll find ways to volunteer and donate, as well as a full list of the programs they run!

Creating Win-Wins for the World

After nearly a decade curating, writing about, and sharing stories of innovators who have found creative solutions to the world’s problems–small and large–one trait many of them share is their ability to create a win-win for all of the people involved. If you want to check out a few of my favorite examples of this in action, here are three I suggest:

Organizations like Clean the World don’t just remind us that there is positive news out there. They also remind us to follow our curiosity, to see problems and seek out creative solutions, and to embrace our unique experiences to bring new ideas to the table. These lessons are inspirational whether we are solving conflict with our kids, approaching problems at work, or–just maybe–if we are driven to create organizations that solve some of the world’s big problems.

Stay beautiful & keep laughing!

-Liesl

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