Frances Micklow/The Star-LedgerYvane Romelus, a house keeper at the Renaissance Woodbridge Hotel in Iselin, NJ, separates used soap and lotion to be donated, recycled and given out in places where there is need.When Shawn Seipler and Paul Till were East Coast salesmen, spending their days in conference rooms and their nights in Holiday Inns, they always wondered what happened to the little bars of soap they left behind.
Being businessmen, they wondered if there might be some way to make a profit out of what they suspected was being thrown away.
After one trip, they decided to each call 15 hotels and ask what they did with their leftover soap.
“Thirty for 30,” Till said. “All of them threw away the stuff.”
One million bars a day was their ballpark figure for North America alone.
Not seeing much hope for a company selling used soap in the United States, they went back to the drawing board.
After Till, 48, read a study about diarrheal illness in rural Bangladesh, they realized they could recycle the soap that hotels throw out and send it to places where people die due to lack of hygiene.
Soon they were melting soap in a pan in Seipler’s kitchen in Orlando.
Now thanks to Clean the World, the nonprofit organization they founded in 2009, hotels around the country are having their soap recycled and distributed to places like Zimbabwe, Nicaragua and Haiti.
As part of a recently announced deal with Starwood Hotels, owner of the Sheraton and Westin chains, Clean the World hopes to gain 1.6 million more pounds of soap per year.
The Orlando-based charity already has distributed more than 8 million bars, free of charge, to 42 countries worldwide.
“We really feel like this is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Seipler, 35.
Through its new for-profit arm, Clean the World hopes to take its soap-recycling mission around the world. It now charges hotels about 65 cents per room each month for its services.
The Starwood deal is changing how the housekeeping staff cleans at the Sheraton in Atlantic City.
“When the guest departs, we do not discard any of the used soaps or shampoos. It all goes into a special box,” said Gabrielle Bruno-Stailey, director of housekeeping of the Sheraton.
The Chauncey Hotel and Conference Center in Princeton, one of 26 Garden State hotels participating in the program, has donated 129 pounds of soap and 119 pounds of shampoo and conditioner over the course of three weeks, said Sara Blivaiss, the general manager.
The Renaissance Woodbridge Hotel in Iselin is expected to provide enough soap for 238 children each year, said Evelin Xavier, the hotel’s director of rooms.
“As the bucket gets half full, we reach out to Clean the World,” said Xavier. “They mail us the shipping labels and we ship them out.”
Once collected, the donated bars are shipped to one of Clean the World’s recycling centers — in Orlando, Las Vegas, Toronto and Vancouver — where they are scraped and soaked in a bleach solution before being ground up. After pressing them into two-ounce bars, volunteers package them for distribution.
“We don’t mix the colors,” said Till, managing director of Clean the World. “White from Disney in the shape of Mickey’s head. Some of Sheraton’s is gold.”
Clean the World said it is now recycling soap from 100,000 hotel rooms a day, but is constantly searching for more partners.
“We’ve got a long way to go in terms of getting every hotel in North America in our program,” said Seipler.