How Used Hotel Soap Gets Recycled Into Brand New Bars | World Wide Waste | Business Insider

Hotels throw out millions of bars of used soap every week. But they don't have to go in the trash. Recycling soap can be as simple as shaving the surface with potato peelers. We would sit here and just scrape it off and make sure it was cleaned up and good to go. That was 14 years ago. Today, Sean Siepler's company, Clean the World, runs a factory that can handle thousands of bars an hour. And across the Atlantic, in Lyon, France, the team at UniSoap turns the waste into new bars they say are completely sanitary. Both companies donate their products to the homeless and children in developing countries. But as these non-profits perfect the process of dealing with this type of trash, hotels have started to cut back on individually wrapped hygiene products. And some countries are even considering banning them entirely. We traveled to France and Florida to see how these two companies help people clean themselves with worldwide waste. A second-hand bar of soap isn't as gross as it might seem. Yes, there's probably dirt, hair, dead skin cells and bacteria on there. But when you wash, soap molecules bind to the germs and natural oils on your skin. While these molecules attract grease and grime, they repel water. Running water pushes the soap molecules, along with all that captured filth, off your skin, safely away from you. So even a contaminated bar is safe to clean your hands with. The bar of soap may have microbes on it, but it probably won't make you sick. In fact, the simple act of handwashing can wash away something as serious as the Ebola virus. Still, both Unisoap and Clean the World follow extra guidelines to clean their bars. Here's how Unisoap collects thousands of bars from hotels in France. First, all grime left from the hotel guests must be removed. The team installed peelers into a table to take off the outer layers. The peelers are razor sharp, so workers wear special gloves to protect their fingers. They inspect every bar. The company claims scraping alone is enough to maintain a sanitary process. But it's a lot of work. So, Pauline worked with an engineer to invent a machine that can reduce some of the labor. While Unisoap wouldn't show us exactly how this prototype works, it hopes to build more of them as it scales up. Commercial mixers grind and blend the differently sized bars into smaller, uniform pieces. The mixture finally enters an extruder that molds the soap into one long piece. Workers hand cut the individual bars and stamp Unisoap's logo into each one. Since the company launched in 2017, workers have processed nearly 10 metric tons of soap this way. Over in the United States, the much larger Clean the World upgraded to an industrial assembly line years ago. The used soap comes from thousands of hotels around the world, adding up to about 1.4 million rooms. In 2009, CEO Sean Siepler started out shaving soap with vegetable peelers in a one-car garage. We would sit here and just scrape it off and make sure it was cleaned up and good to go. Today, a giant machine called a refiner cleans the dirt and hair from the top layers, pushing out uniform noodle-like strands from all the differently sized bars. Those strands get heated and mixed with a solution of water and bleach for seven to eight minutes to sanitize them. A conveyor belt brings the sterilized mix to a final refiner before it gets molded. A long bar of recycled soap rolls out from the extruder as it's cut into individual bars. Clean the World ships soap overseas to countries like Ghana, Bangladesh, and the Philippines, where many people live without basic access to running water. More than three billion people around the world live this way. And over 700 children die every day from diarrheal diseases that might easily be prevented by washing with soap and water. We need a couple more. The company reports back to its hotel partners about how their donations help. So they know exactly how much landfill diversion they've had, how many bars of soap have gotten into the hands of children and mothers around the world because of their efforts. Since 2009, Clean the World has donated more than 73 million recycled bars to children in need. Even though UniSoap is still growing compared to Clean the World, it's already making an impact closer to home. Pauline got her idea to recycle soap while staying at a hotel. So she started reaching out to hotels in 2017 about their used toiletries. Now they collect soap from nearly 350 locations. Getting the soap was the easy part. Figuring out how to recycle it took longer. From the moment we started doing research and development on the process, we started working on it. Until the moment we trained the monitors, the disabled workers. We can say that it practically took two years. That led Pauline to a government program that matches young people with disabilities to a variety of small companies. And she relies on volunteers to help distribute hygiene kits containing toothbrushes, toothpaste and of course, recycled soap. Two years ago, we opened this facility called Le Phare to help families in need. The idea is that it's a reference point for these families so that they can find a time of warmth. Marcel comes in a few times a week to meet with friends, play games, and stay warm. As well as to use the only public showers in the area. Unisoap has donated 30,000 of these bars across France to community centers just like this one. But the hotel industry may be shifting away from practices that allow these two companies to help people. In 2019, Marriott International and IHG, two of the world's largest hotel companies, announced they were stocking bathrooms with large refillable liquid dispensers. That's almost 2.4 million hotel rooms with no more bars in their showers. The companies estimate they'll eliminate over 2 million pounds of plastic heading for the landfill this way. Marriott told Insider it's even considering removing the small hand soap bars next to hotel sinks. But this trade-off isn't so simple. According to one study, washing with a bar uses less soap versus liquid cleaners. Up to six times less. So bars go further than liquids and don't require plastic bottles to begin with. And those refillable soap containers? They nearly always take on more bacteria when staff refill them. Despite this, Unisoap and Clean the World continue to grow their soap recycling initiatives beyond their humble beginnings. Both started from a simple question. What happens to this soap after I check out? So the next time you're asked how a hotel can make your stay better, consider asking them what they do with your dirty soap.