One company is tackling hotel waste by collecting and cleaning half-used soaps
- Half-used toiletries from hotel chains generate millions of pounds of waste every year.
- Nonprofit Clean the World collects used soaps from hotel chains for donations.
- The nonprofit donates the recycled soaps to countries with high rates of fatal dieases, like cholera and pneumonia, which are linked to poor hygiene.
- Business Insider Today explored how hotel chains are ditching single-use toiletry bottles for more sustainable alternatives, and how this will affect Clean the World's bottom line.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Following is a copy of the transcript.
This is how soaps used to be cleaned to be recycled and reused.
It's how nonprofit Clean the World started its work, collecting used soaps from hotels, and cleaning them one by one using potato peelers to scrape off the used parts.
The soaps would then be donated to countries that have a high death rate due to pneumonia and cholera, diseases often linked to lack of hygiene.
CEO Clean the World, Shawn Seipler: We all got into a single-car garage in downtown Orlando, Florida. We sat around on upside down pickle buckets.
Narrator: That was the method back in 2009: six people would clean about 500 bars a day.
This year, with more advanced technology, they'll produce 6 million bars of soap.
They've also expanded production with the rehabilitation of plastics from small shampoo and lotion bottles.
Yet things could soon change, as many of the nonprofit's major hotel partners are ditching the single-use toiletries and looking for more sustainable alternatives for their bottled liquid soap and shampoo.
Half-used toiletries from hotel chains generate millions of pounds of waste every year, so massive hotel chains have been slowly getting rid of them.
Marriott International, the world's largest hotel chain, made a commitment to eliminate small plastic bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and bath gel from its hotel rooms worldwide by the end of December 2020.
This move will eradicate half a billion small bottles each year, which equates to 1.7 million pounds of plastic.
InterContinental Hotels Group, or IHG, plans to do the same by the end of 2021, eliminating 200 million bottles each year.
Both hotels are Clean the World partners, and the nonprofit expects to see a change in revenue since they won't receive as many toiletries from them.
Seipler: The industry very rapidly is going away from the small amenity bottles and that does have a revenue reduction potentially. We at Clean the World just have to continue to create new products that are impact products that help companies and help other people, and that will protect us.
Narrator: The nonprofit will still recycle bar soaps from IHG, since the hotels will continue to offer them.
Seipler: We'll still have the opportunity to donate our soap to organizations like Clean the World. It will just be in sustainable packaging. Until those changes take place, business at Clean the World goes on as usual.
Narrator: Along with a full staff and 20,000 volunteers annually, these machines do a more thorough job than those peelers ever did.
Clean the World warehouse supervisor, Keith Brown: We're fast paced here. It's rough and it's hot, but it's for a great cause. We come here every day and that will drive us to come in and do what we do and to endure the heat and pain and sweat to help others.
Narrator: When the soaps get delivered to Clean the World, warehouse employees throw them into large bins.
Seipler: The industry very rapidly is going away from the small amenity bottles and that does have a revenue reduction potentially. We at Clean the World just have to continue to create new products that are impact products that help companies and help other people, and that will protect us.
Narrator: The nonprofit will still recycle bar soaps from IHG, since the hotels will continue to offer them.
COO Americas for IHG, Colleen Keating: We'll still have the opportunity to donate our soap to organizations like Clean the World. It will just be in sustainable packaging.
Narrator: Until those changes take place, business at Clean the World goes on as usual.
Along with a full staff and 20,000 volunteers annually, these machines do a more thorough job than those peelers ever did.
Brown: We're fast paced here. It's rough and it's hot, but it's for a great cause. Just saving folks' lives. We come here every day and that will drive us to come in and do what we do and to endure the heat and pain and sweat to help others.
Narrator: When the soaps get delivered to Clean the World, warehouse employees throw them into large bins.
Seipler: We're gonna weigh it to determine how much product is in it. We're going to put it into our system so we can provide impact statements back to each one of our 8,000 hotel partners, so they know exactly how much landfill diversion they've had, how many bars of soap I've gotten into the hands of children and mothers around the world because of their efforts, how much plastic has been recycled.
Narrator: So, if you're an avid traveler, your collection of these tiny bottles will probably begin to shrink. Instead, you'll find these large containers in your hotel shower.
30% of IHG's hotels already have bulk amenities in place.
But the decision to put them in 100% of their properties is just one of many moves IHG is making in an effort to become a more sustainably responsible business.
Keating: Last year, we eliminated plastic straws and that eliminated 50 million plastic straws annually.
Narrator: While exact estimates vary, there's an understanding among experts that, historically, hotels have always been a major contributor to landfills.
So now it remains to be seen how this commitment to reduce waste and meet sustainability goals will sit with customers, and how it could impact organizations like Clean the World.