there's an episode friends where Ross
and Chandler are checking out of a hotel
in Vermont you have some complimentary
toiletries sent up to my room as Ross
picks up his suitcase to leave it bursts
open 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's
suitcase Sean Seiler 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 cycler 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 one-and-a-half million
children under five every year that can
be prevented by hand-washing since 2009
clean the world has distributed more
than 50 million bars of soap to people
in 127 countries the non-profit
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 two 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
recycling facilities they're the
toiletries are sorted by product before
entering the first stage of the
recycling process for barso its 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 their remoulded
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 twenty 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 Roth instead of taking one
um I pick six leave that stuff behind
you're twice you soaps won't go to waste
you