Pretty much nobody besides Eloise and Leonard Cohen stays in a hotel for long enough to go through a bar of soap. They can't put your slightly-used soap out for the next guest, though, so hotels throw out more than 2.5 million bars a day. Hilton Hotels have now realized how stupid this is, and they've partnered with a nonprofit called the Global Soap Project to re-form discarded soap into brand-new bars for distribution in impoverished countries.
Hilton will donate all the discarded soap from its 3,750 hotels to the Global Soap Project, which will recycle them into new bars and then distribute them to vulnerable populations. The project distributes the soap through non-governmental organizations that work with orphans, disaster victims, and refugees in developing countries.
Hygiene products like soap can mean the difference between life and death in areas with a high risk of parasites or infectious disease — it can reduce deaths from diarrhea, prevent children from getting pneumonia, and lower infant mortality rates. So the partnership will reduce Hilton hotels' waste by 20 percent, and also help avoid the 1.4 million deaths per year that could be prevented by handwashing with soap, according to the Global Soap Project.
