Saving lives with recycled hotel soap
Remember the last time you stayed at a hotel? Remember that bar of soap you used to wash your hand once. When you left the hotel probably threw that away. That bar of soap might now be helping poor children fight disease.
Each year, hundreds of millions bars of soap are discarded all around the world. We are throwing away that much soap at the expense of other people who don’t have anything. That might not seem like a big thing, but in some 3rd world counties a bar of soap is the difference between being healthy or being sick.
When people fall sick because they didn’t wash up your hands, it’s more expensive for them to go to the hospital to get treated. That’s where the problem begins and people end up dying.
With the support of his wife, local friends and hotels in Atlanta, USA, Derreck Kayongo began a Global Soap Project in 2009. The big idea is to collect these used bars of soap and send them to 3rd world countries were they are needed.
So far, 300 hotels in America have joined the collection effort, generating 100 tons of soap. Some participating hotels even donate high-end soaps such as Bvlgari, which retails up to $27 for a single bar.
Volunteers across the U.S. collect the hotel soaps and ship them to the Global Soap warehouse in Atlanta, USA. On Saturdays, volunteers gather there to reprocess, clean and package the bars.
The rest of the world should adopt this idea, it’s truly a great cause.
(via CNN)