Clean the World --- and change history!
One of the biggest problems of the times in which we live is the waste of food and other materials.
Often we do not even realize how much waste we create and that a lot of it could be eliminated, if only we paid more attention to recycling -- even when we are on vacation and in a comfortable hotel, for example.
Probably you have never thought about it but in hotels "waste" is part of the cost of satisfying all the customer's needs. Take a look at bars of soap, which are changed every day, regardless of how much has actually been consumed.
What happens to those that are replaced? They are simply thrown away, but a farsighted man decided to do something else with them.
Changing the bars of hotel soap every day, regardless of what may have been used, is a requirement for high-quality hotels and it is a requirement to get a 5-star rating.
According to a global estimate, 5 million bars of hotel soap are thrown away per day.
A company in the USA has decided to turn what would have soon become waste into something more positive.
The Clean the World is a company based in Florida and its activity is to dissolve the discarded soap from hotels and create packages of new bars of soap to be sent to countries that need them.
The founder of the company is Shawn Seipler who due to traveling for work, often found himself sleeping in hotels and it was he who discovered the fate of the bars of soap used in hotels.
Seipler said he had discovered the issue of soap by chance while returning to his room when the hotel maid was cleaning the bathroom. He noticed that the old bar of soap had been thrown in the trash, although it was still usable. After asking he was informed that the practice was followed by many 5-star hotels.
Intrigued by the matter, he discovered the process of "recycling" soap for repackaging as a new product.
He then had a brilliant idea -- to process the soap thrown away by the hotel to create new soap to be sent to the poorest countries, where many diseases are transmitted simply due to the lack of hygiene and the poor availability of germicidal disinfectant cleaners.
The issue does not involve only hotel soaps but also bottles of shampoo, hand lotion, and shower gel. Everything is thrown away and replaced regardless of usage.
The hotels participating in the initiative pay Shawn 50 cents per room per month, to contribute to the costs of the recycling process.
The company provides the participating hotels with differentiated containers for the proper collection of the used products and also sees to their pick up once full.
The Clean the World organization now has three very active locations around the world --- in Florida, Las Vegas, and Hong Kong. The final products are sent to non-governmental organizations such as the Red Cross.
The company is continuously aware of the waste made every day, in fact, most of the hotel shampoo and lotion bottles that come into the transformation centers are at least three quarters full.
In 2016, the company produced and distributed 7 million bars of soap and 400 million hygiene kits.
The company's commitment is exemplary. In fact, a quarter of the 16,000 infant deaths each year are due to diarrhea and pneumonia which are diseases that are also transmitted due to the lack of proper hygiene.
The project's success is evident and the company is currently working with 20% of the hotels in the USA, but also other forms of structures that offer public accommodations have joined.
Here is a video to better understand the mission of Clean the World, their goals, and the work of all its employees, which are all commendable. The idea came from the realization that we cannot afford to continue such excessive waste when in the world there are still people who do not have access to water and who are starving. Certainly, Clean the World, cannot solve the problem of world poverty, but if there were more similar projects perhaps the world we live in would be much better.
