Used Hotel Soap Bars Get Second Lives Saving Lives
Vadim Liberman August 18, 2014
The Novotel Bangkok joins the trend of recycling used soap bars.
What happens to bars of soap that guests leave behind in hotel rooms? At the Bangkok Novotel on Siam Square, many of them will find their way to poor communities. The hotel has recently partnered with local nonprofits to donate used soap bars for recycling, according to Thailand’s The Nation.
A Novotel spokesperson describes its “Soap for Hope” endeavor as a “project that not only simultaneously reduces hotel waste, motivates and provides new skills to children in slums, but more importantly saves lives and reduces the spread of contagious diseases. What’s more, we plan to buy some of the soap back from the foundation to generate revenue to create sustainable development…”
The Novotel is part of a growing trend of hotels linking with nonprofits to recycle soap and fight diseases among the poor by promoting good hygiene. One such organization, Clean the World, says it has collected used soap bars from 2,000 hotels and resorts. After sanitizing them, the group distributes the new bars to needy people in 96 countries. So far, the organization claims it has donated almost 19 billion bars of soap.
Another nonprofit making the world a cleaner place, the Global Soap Project, works to “reduce waste and save lives, one bar of soap at a time.” The organization says it has recycled millions of bars of soap, helping people in 32 nations.
[Photo: iStock]
A good concept in principle, however, many would cringe at the thoughts of using bars of soap that may have hairs attached and used around 'intimate' parts of a guests body. Nearly as unhygienic as those disgusting soap/shampoo dispensers that many hotels now use in guests bathrooms.
Typo: In the last paragraph, it says "save lies", rather than "save lives".
if they would publish the list hotels who take part in this, I would definitely stay more there...