Recycling soap to save lives: 2 metric tons of used soap collected in Sands China

I wonder what they do with that bar of soap from the hotel room?” This simple question has led to an initiative of recycling soap to save lives. Thousands of hotels worldwide discard over three million bars of soap into landfills and incinerators every single day. Meanwhile, thousands of children around the world die from hygiene-related illnesses that can be prevented by simply washing with a bar of soap.
“How do we put the soap into the hands of those who need it the most?” asked Shailesh Adhav, Managing Director of Clean the World-Asia, at a promotional event held in the back of house area at Holiday Inn Macao Cotai Central yesterday. “Many have thought about what happens to the bar of soap, but they don’t do anything, because it is like boiling the ocean. It’s an amazing task to try to accomplish, and one person alone can’t do it. It’s the strength of taking very simple actions together and saying, ‘how can we find the right partners?’”

As the world’s largest hotel soap recycler, social enterprise Clean the World has collected and converted over 750 tones of discarded soap into sanitized soap bars, which were then distributed to 70 countries. “In four short years, we have been able to create a global hygiene revolution,” stressed Adhav to the media. “Our strength is the strength of our partnerships and the strength of making sure that we line with those who have scalability.”
“What do you do with ten thousand rooms, fifteen hundred house-keeping staff and about 41 metric tons of soap each year which otherwise will be thrown away?” asked Mark McWhinnie, Senior Vice President of Operations of the Venetian Macao and Sands Cotai Central. Since June 13, when it entered its partnership with Clean the World, Sands China, holding some of the world’s largest integrated resorts at Cotai Strip together with its Sands Macao property, has collected nearly two metric tons of used soap to date.
“As a hotel, we don’t have that expertise [of hygienically reprocessing used soap], so we’ve only got one choice: throw it away. But not anymore,” he explained. “Sands China represents close to 10,000 rooms in this city; there are just over 30,000 rooms in this city in total. Once we got this process certified we want to throw out the challenge to the other 20,000 rooms to do the same thing and triple the amount of soap that we can contribute to Clean the World.”
“Absolutely [we want to expand our partnerships]. Not everyone will join our mission and they have their reasons, but for us, we will never say stop,” stressed Adhav. “Not many people know that you can even recycle soap; not many people know that soap can save lives. Our goal is to educate, and to raise awareness. It’s not just the hotel leaders, it’s to work out, ‘how do we make everyone aware?’”
So far, Clean the World-Asia has established four beneficiary organizations in Macau. “There’s a need and there’s also the ability for us to help them, not only to use soap, but maybe even show them how to make soap. These are the things that we are promoting. We are in discussion with the Red Cross,” said Adhav. Staff reporter

Published in Macau Daily Times August 2013

for the Clean the World Asia youtube video link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0z0UI68Abc&feature=youtu.be