Summary
Highlights
The video opens with a humorous reference to a 'Friends' episode where Ross over-collects hotel toiletries. It then highlights the significant amount of toiletries left behind in hotel rooms and introduces Shawn Seipler's realization in 2009 that these half-used products were simply discarded.
Shawn Seipler founded Clean the World in 2009 to address this waste. Starting in his garage, he developed a method to recycle used bar soaps into new, sterile ones. These recycled soaps are then donated globally to children and families lacking easy access to hygiene products, helping to prevent diseases like pneumonia and diarrhea.
Since its inception, Clean the World has distributed over 50 million bars of soap to 127 countries. The organization has expanded its recycling facilities and partnered with 8,000 hotels and resorts, including major chains like Walt Disney World Hotels, Marriott, and Hilton. Hilton, joining in March 2019, donated 2 million pounds of toiletries in its first seven months, contributing to 7.6 million recycled soap bars.
The video details Clean the World's recycling process: hotel staff collect used soaps and bottles in special bins, which are then transported to recycling facilities. Bar soaps are surface-cleaned, sterilized to eliminate pathogens, ground up, and remolded into new bars. These new soaps are distributed to homeless shelters in the US and to people worldwide.
Hilton aims to divert all its soap from landfills by 2030, and Clean the World has already prevented 20 million pounds of hotel waste from polluting North American landfills. Some hotels are moving towards bulk toiletries instead of single-use items. Clean the World is adapting by planning to create 'impact products' like hygiene kits to maintain its mission, regardless of changes in hotel practices.