I travel a lot, and always wonder what’s happening to all those little hotel soaps and miniature bottles of shampoo left in guest rooms. To avoid opening a package that I might use once or twice before I check out, I always bring my own from home in refillable bottles”but I’m still close to losing my mind when I think about how many bars of soap are being put out daily in the 4.6 million hotel rooms in the US alone (my brain will explode if I try to calculate the number of rooms in the rest of the world). That’s why I was thrilled to hear about the non-profit organization Clean the World, which is collecting gently used soaps and partially used shampoos and body care products, sterilizing them through steam and other processes, and redistributing them in places where they’re most needed.

At this time, they’re being collected from 80 participating hotels in Orlando, Fla. To date, Clean the World has distributed 60,000 bars of soap to villages in Haiti, where thousands die annually from diarrhea brought on by poor sanitation practices. The project is the brainchild of Shawn Seipler, who hopes to see the program expand nationally, and grow to benefit others in need. Read about Seipler’s altruistic efforts here.

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