WHAT DO HOTELS DO WITH YOUR LEFTOVER SOAP?

"Clean hands are watchmen of wellbeing"

In Today's world, everyone knows how important it is to wash your hands regularly and stay healthy. Just by washing your hands regularly, you can help to prevent yourself from major diseases like diarrhoea, respiratory infections and may even help to prevent skin and eye infections. But with the ease of washing our hands, we are missing out one major thing and that is our soap.

Now coming back to our question what do hotels do with your leftover soap?. The answer to this question is very simple "they throw it away". No one hardly cares because it was just a simple used bar of soap but what if I tell you more than 2 billion bars of partially used hotel soaps are thrown away every day in the United States. Imagine the amount of waste we are producing just by throwing away things. This same thought also arrived in Shawn Seipler's mind but before going further into Shawn Seipler's story lets know the current situation of sanitation in the country.

CURRENT SITUATION OF SANITATION

The present condition of the country is not so good in terms of sanitation. In fact, according to a WHO report, it was found that about 70 million people in India do not have access to the most basic medicine - SOAP. The situation is worse in rural areas as compared with the urban ones. A large segment of rural India does not use soap and water to wash hands as you can see in the photo below.

Percentage of people wash their hands in rural and urban India

Now, this is a very alarming situation because on one side in this pandemic we are awaring people to be safe from this virus and on the other side a huge percentage of our people do not use soap to wash hands in their day to day life.

A program also like Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin was introduced in which the government has ensured provisions of providing an incentive amount of INR 12,000 to Below Poverty Line(BPL)/ identified Above Poverty Line(APL) households in rural areas. This incentive aims at facilitating a positive change in the behaviour for people to undertake the installation of handwashing facilities and construction of toilets on their own. But still, a lot more work is required in this mission.

SHAWN SEIPLER's MISSION

A picture of Shawn with hotel's leftover soaps

Shawn Seipler, a Florida based entrepreneur who quit his high-profile job to make his mission possible. As Shawn was a frequent traveller, one day he was in a hotel room and asked the same question from the hotel staff about the partially used soap. The hotel staff said the same thing "we throw it away sir".After this incident, Shawn did some research and found majorly two things.

• There are millions of half-used soap bars thrown away each day.
• Every year, about two million children die due to diseases that could be prevented simply by using soap.

Shawn tried to relate these two things and then came out with an idea of recycling of soaps. So, in 2009 he started collecting leftover soap bars from Florida's hotels and started to recycle soaps in a relative's garage in Orlando. At their facility, soap bars were first sanitized, then they were grinded and then cut into new bars. These bars were then boxed for distribution. From here the organisation named "Clean The World" was born. Clean the world charges $1 per room per month and in return gets to make recycled soaps for the needy ones. Presently Clean The World has done the following works

• They have distributed more than 53 million bars of soap to over 127 countries
• 14 million lbs of waste diverted from landfill by Clean The World.
• They have also contributed to a 30% reduction in pre-adolescent deaths from hygiene-related illnesses.

SUNDARA SOAP RECYCLING

Erin Zaikis

Sundara is a non-profitable organisation which was set up by Erin Zaikis in 2014. Erin a 25-year-old Jewish woman who witnessed the poverty and misery of slum-dwellers living in Mumbai slums. After seeing their suffering she thought of starting an organisation in an order to provide recycled soaps to unprivileged slum dwellers.

She convinced various hotels in Mumbai to provide her their leftover soaps for recycling, the same way what Shawn also did. They have been providing recycled soap in the city's slum pocket of Kalwa and also in Shilonda, a village in Dahanu. 

But there's one thing which differs Sundara from Clean The World. Sundara not only provides recycled soaps to the people but also creates employment for widows, victim of domestic violence and single mothers.

Erin was also recently named in Forbes prestigious "30 under 30- Social Entrepreneurs 2019" for the achievements of her company Sundara. Sundara has already produced over 20,000 soaps in India in 2016. They receive funding from US-based soap companies, individual donors from Canada and India and also hopes to expand operations in the future.

CONCLUSION

You might have probably known by now that how much importance a bar of soap plays in your life. Everyone needs to understand that washing hands should not be a luxury but it should be a necessity for every people around the world. People do complain about the things they see wrong but there are only a few of them who actually get down to make that work possible. People like Erin and Shawn are one of those few people who make things possible. So, the next time whenever you go to any hotel room make sure to take away your used soap with you or get in touch with any of the organisations like these. But before throwing it away, keep in mind that many people just think of having a bar of soap in their life. Your this simple step might help someone to get a soap at their home.

 

References 

https://www.livemint.com/news/india/rural-india-s-covid-19-challenge-low-access-to-soap-and-water-11587375522654.html

https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/news/recycling-soaps-recycling-lives/article8605913.ece