Narrator: There's an episode of Friends where Ross
and Chandler are checking out of a hotel in Vermont.
Ross: Could you have some complimentary toiletries
sent up to my room?
Narrator: As Ross picks up his suitcase to leave,
it bursts open and an avalanche of mini soaps
and lotions comes tumbling out.
It's admittedly a lot of stuff,
but not compared to what's actually
left behind in hotel rooms.
So what happens to the toiletries that
don't fit into Ross' suitcase?
Shawn Seipler used to stay in around
150 hotel rooms a year.
One day, a thought hit him.
What happens to all the half-used
soaps he leaves behind?
When he called the front desk to ask,
they told him it all just gets tossed.
So in 2009, he started Clean the World
out of a one-car garage in Florida.
With a few friends, some potato peelers,
meat grinders, and cookers,
Seipler developed a way to recycle used
bars of soap into new, sterile ones, which can
then be donated to children and families
around the world who don't have easy access to soap.
That makes them susceptible to diseases like
pneumonia and diarrhea, which kill almost
1.5 million children under 5 every year
but can be prevented by handwashing.
Since 2009, Clean the World has distributed more
than 50 million bars of soap to people in 127 countries.
The nonprofit initiative quickly outgrew the garage
and now has recycling facilities in Orlando,
Las Vegas, Montreal and Hong Kong.
And it works with 8,000 hotel and resort partners,
including Walt Disney World Hotels, Marriott, and Hilton.
Hilton joined forces with Clean the World in March 2019.
In its first seven months, Hilton donated
2 million pounds of toiletries, which contributed
to 7.6 million bars of recycled soap.
But how do you clean the thing that does the cleaning?
Here's how it works.
Starting at the hotel, staff members are trained
on the collection and recycling process.
Housekeeping collects the used bars and bottles
and deposits them in special bins.
The bins are then transported to one of
Clean the World's recycling facilities.
There the toiletries are sorted by product
before entering the first stage of the recycling process.
For bar soap, it's first surface cleaned
before going through a sterilization process
that eliminates all pathogens.
The sterilized bars are then ground up
and put through a manufacturing line
where they're remolded into new bars.
Once they're boxed and loaded onto pallets,
the bars are distributed to homeless shelters
and organizations in the US and to people
in need around the world.
Hilton has pledged to divert all of its soap
from ending up in the trash by 2030.
And Clean the World has kept 20 million pounds
of hotel waste from polluting North American
landfills since it was founded.
Some hotels are starting to take a different
approach to cutting down waste by eliminating
single-use toiletries from their rooms entirely,
instead opting for bulk offerings.
Clean the World knows that this is a possibility
for its hotel partners as well.
The plan would be to create new "impact products"
like hygiene kits and corporate event packages
to make up for the potential drop
in production and revenue.
As of now, Hilton hasn't decided to make
the switch from individual to bulk toiletries.
So if you're staying in a Hilton hotel
or another of Clean the World's partners,
don't be like Ross.
Ross: Instead of taking one, I take six.
Narrator: Leave that stuff behind.
Your twice-used soaps won't go to waste.