Used hotel soap presents problems that remain underlooked in the world of recycling today. The Clean the World non-profit is a foundation that plans to bring solutions to this sustainability problem.
Soap Wastage Explained
According to an Insider Science video on YouTube, hotels throw millions of used soap bars weekly. As such, the limited recycling options result in these thrown-away soaps ending up in landfills despite only being used once or twice.
This is why Clean the World, a non-profit organization, provides sustainable solutions to address this soap wastage. The organization suggests that instead of going into the trash, they can be recycled.
Clean the World's website highlights its waste reduction program, focusing on handling the large volume of solid waste generated by hotels. As such, the foundation mentions how soap and bottle amenity recycling fundamentally offers many benefits.
Soap recycling benefits include environmental protection, natural resource preservation, and cost reduction. The foundation urges people not to throw away used soap bars and plastic bottles as they can still be used.
Clean the World Solution
Clean the World operates a factory that handles thousands of bars an hour. The soaps processed are considered waste and come from thousands of hotels worldwide.
The Insider Science video specifies that when adding everything up, the soaps come from about 1.4 million rooms. To commence the recycling process, everything starts with the refiner machine.
First, the refiner cleans the soap, removing dirt and hair from the outer layer of the soap. As such, the output of this machine turns the soap into noodle-like strains to be further processed.
Next, the noodle-like strains are heated and sanitized with water and bleach for seven to eight hours. This happens before they're brought to the final refiner machine to start the molding process.
After the soap has been broken down, sanitized, and processed, it'll then be shaped and molded into a long bar of recycled soap. The soap is then cut into individual bars and distributed as new, efficient, sanitized, and sustainable soap.
Improving Vulnerable Communities
Clean the World foundation focuses on providing resources, programming, and education for communities affected by natural or humanitarian crises. They also extend their help towards those affected by poverty and homelessness.
Among their solutions are water, sanitation, and hygiene focused education. As such, Clean the World operates in the US, UK, Canada, EU, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore, and more.
In the US alone, it was reported that over two million used soap bars from hotels are wasted daily. Through Clean the World's soap recycling facility, they're able to repurpose these wasted hygiene products one soap at a time.
The New York Times reports that Clean the World has distributed around 70 million soap bars in over 120 countries, including places like Romania.
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