There’s two types of travelers:
1.) The thrifty ones who grab all their unused bars of soap
and mini shampoo bottles from the hotel bathroom, and have a stash of dozens of
them around the house.
2.) The ones who use the soap and shampoo a time or two during
a stay, and just leave it behind without a second thought.
You’re nodding your head as to whether you’re on Team Take
It or Team Leave It. Now, all our guests at French Lick Resort can join the
same side: Team Recycle It.
Both our hotels have joined forces with Clean the World,
which is a social enterprise with the mission of distributing recycled soap and
bottled products to people in need — especially children and families in
countries where children face a high risk of hygiene-related illnesses.
To illustrate how it works, we’ll follow the life cycle of a
used soap bar or empty shampoo bottle:
• Since May 1, the housekeeping staffs at both French Lick
and West Baden Springs Hotels have been rerouting used bathroom products.
Instead of going in the trash, soap bars go in one bag, and bottled shampoo,
conditioner, shower gel and facial cleanser and lotion go in another bag.
• At the end of their shift, the housekeepers empty their
bags into large community bins: soap in the green bin; bottles in the blue bin.
• When a bin fills up, the hotel ships it back to Clean the
World.
• At a Clean the World facility, the soap gets sanitized,
grinded and molded into new bars. The bottles are recycled into new mini
bottles that go into some of the new hygiene kits.
• The hygiene kits (which have soap bars, hair care
products, toothbrush/toothpaste, a razor and washrag) are then distributed to
groups in need: veterans, homeless, and border patrol detention centers, for
example. Globally, even more individual soap bars are delivered to countries
where WASH-related illnesses (involving water, sanitation or hygiene) are the
main killers of children under 5. Hand washing with soap is a low-cost
intervention that can reduce those casualties by almost 50 percent. And Clean
the World has done its part by providing than 46 million bars of soap across
127 countries over the last 10 years.
Pretty incredible, right? Especially since it tackles two
different problems at once.
“The first benefit was we were able to immediately able to
start recycling a significant amount of plastic,” explains Jarrid Davis, a
Guest Services Manager at French Lick Springs Hotel. “And from there, we were
able to find a place that would not only recycle it, but would also turn it into
something that was impactful in other areas of need. For example, one bar of
new soap will go 180 handwashes for someone who doesn’t have any soap, which
makes a big difference.”
And even though making the soap/bottle collections in the
hotel guestrooms requires some extra steps for the housekeeping staff — people
are often resistant to change, after all — everyone around here seems to be
taking pride in having a hand in the mission.
“Everyone was genuinely excited, jumped right on board with
it. We had a meeting where we discussed what the products are going to go in
and what purpose the soap and bottles are going to serve after they leave here,
and it was a very positive response,” Jarrid says.
Want to join the cause? Here’s how you can help.
We can recycle any of the mini bottles in your hotel bathroom
that are up to 80 percent full — so if it’s a full bottle or you’ve only used a
dab, go ahead and take it home if you’d like. Otherwise, you can simply leave
behind those partially used bottles, and we’ll add them to our recycling
totals. All of the soap bars (whether partially used or unwrapped) can also be
donated back to Clean the World when you choose to leave them in the guestroom
when you check out.
Just at French Lick Springs Hotel in the few months since we’ve
started, we have collected 89 pounds of plastic and 168 pounds of soap. That
equates to 896 bars of soap that Clean the World has produced and distributed
to areas in need.
Pretty awesome how those tiny soaps and mini bottles add up
to such a huge impact.