Ever wonder what happens to that bar of new soap you only use once after a night’s stay at a hotel?
That soap usually ends up in a landfill with all the other barely-used bars of soap that arrive there from other hotels, resorts, motor inns and bed and breakfasts.
But a new non-profit recycling centre in Vancouver is extending the life of hotel soap and, in turn, extending the lives of children and other people living in poverty-stricken areas worldwide.
According to Clean the World, which is a U.S.-based non-profit founded in 2009, more than 3.5 million deaths occur every year among children five years and under from acute respiratory infection and diarrheal disease.
Up to 60% of these deaths, says Clean the World, are preventable by proper hand-washing. That’s where Clean the World’s soap-recycling centre in the Downtown Eastside comes in.
Mission Possible, a Vancouver-based Christian non-profit agency that helps members of the Downtown Eastside find work and housing, is operating the centre as Clean the World’s partner in Western Canada.
More than 50 hotels and other paid accommodations in Western Canada are sending soap from thousands of rooms to the Downtown Eastside recycling centre, which employs eight women from the neighbourhood.
Brian Postlewait, executive director of Mission Possible, said about 95% of the soap that arrives at the centre looks as though it has been used only once or twice.
Nonetheless, the centre’s employees give the used soap the star-treatment: it is gently scrubbed to remove visible dirt, then power-washed and bleach-shocked to remove remaining bacteria. It’s then dried and repackaged.
From there, Mission Possible ships it to a Clean the World distribution centre, before it ends up in the hands of the poor in any number of countries around the world.
Said Postlewait: “Clean the World was looking to expand into Canada, and I was looking to create a social enterprise that would employ folks with barriers to employment.”
He added that from an employment perspective, the key to the program’s success is in the fact that it’s dignifying for the workers: they are aware that their work may be helping save lives elsewhere.
Worldwide, soap from more than 200,000 hotel rooms is now being diverted from landfills through the Clean the World program.
Mission Possible is paid by Clean the World to sell and operate its program in Western Canada.
Accommodations pay $1 a month for each room they operate. In exchange, members receive promotional materials and a recycling bin.
When the bin is full of used soap, Mission Possible will ship it for free to its recycling centre.
Postlewait said that there are 77,000 hotel rooms in B.C. that deliver about 339 metric tonnes of soap annually into landfills.
Nelson House Bed & Breakfast in Vancouver’s West End was the first B&B in Western Canada to join the Clean the World program.
“Everyone in the hospitality business wonders what they’re going to do with all this old soap,” said the B&B’s owner, David Ritchie.
“I had boxes of it – hundreds of bars of soap – that I was so reluctant to send to the landfill.”
Part of the reason he joined the Clean the World program is that, as a Vancouverite, he’s pleased to see the program deliver local jobs in an area of the city where jobs are hard to come by.
“I probably wouldn’t have participated if it required me to mail the soap away to some distant processing centre,” he said. “To me, it’s a local initiative – I like that.”
While the Beach Club Resort in Parksville is considered among the most sustainable and eco-friendly resorts in the province, the 149-room destination was, until recently, sending up to 400 pounds of soap to the landfill each month.
The Beach Club had been searching for four months for a place to recycle its used soap – as part of its efforts to become one of only two resorts in B.C. to achieve a five-key rating in the Green Key eco-rating program.
It had found one other soap recycler in B.C., but that business had been closed for a number of years.
The Beach Club has other sustainability initiatives complementing its soap-recycling program: it now has three recycling bins for guests in each room and recently announced a partnership with recycled-paper supplier Tork to reduce its annual consumption by 55 trees, 22 thousand gallons of water, 13 thousand kilowatts of energy and 9.7 cubic yards of landfill.
The hotel aims to be carbon neutral next year – although to attain that moniker, the Beach Club may be required to buy carbon credits. Cristina Baldini, the Beach Club’s office manager, said that the resort’s guests notice its efforts.
“There’s a huge and growing percentage of people every year that are booking based on what the hotel’s sustainability rating is,” she said.
Among other B.C-based participants in the Clean the World program are Vancouver’s Century Plaza and Tofino’s Wickaninnish Inn.