When I was researching shelters for my recent post on how to diminish your collection of travel size hotel amenities, I also looked into recycling half-used hotel toiletries. I felt like I had seen something about this on SPG TV a few years ago, but only had a vague impression.

I was happy to find the April article in USA Today talking about how successful Clean the World has been in partnering with hotel chains to salvage half used bottles and bars.

Participation is on an individual hotel basis and relies heavily on the housekeepers — who need to put partially-used products in special bins. From there it goes to the Clean the World headquarters where it is either sterilized and repackaged, or if it’s mostly used, it’s combined with other pieces then sterilized, melted down, and reformed. From there it’s shipped out to poorer countries where hygenic products are in scarce supply/unaffordable.

Now I have no idea if this model is cost-effective, or if it would actually be cheaper to apply those resources and funds to purchasing new products to send over, but as long as they’re only using private and not government funding to accomplish their aims, I really like the idea of something good coming out of the soaps I’m leaving behind.

I was also excited to see this initiative is world wide! Sands China, whose collections of monster hotels in Macau which I visited in July, collected over two tons (over 4400 lbs) of used soaps and shampoos since June!

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