Story highlights Proper hygiene could help save lives, the nonprofit's founder says

His group melts down and sterilizes used soap to ship to places that need it

(CNN) Have you ever thought about what happens to that bar of soap in your hotel room you only used once? Shawn Seipler did while visiting Minneapolis in 2008.

"I called the front desk and asked," he says. "They said they threw it away."

That's when the idea for recycling soap came to him.

Pointing to World Health Organization statistics on childhood mortality , which lists diarrhea among the leading causes of death for children under 5, Seipler argues proper hygiene using soap could help save lives.

"Next thing you know, me and the Puerto Rican half of the family were sitting on upside-down pickle buckets in a garage in Orlando with vegetable peelers, cooking soap," he says.

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