An Orlando nonprofit is working to clean up the planet, one soap bar at a time.
Clean the World recycles discarded bars of soap and shampoos from hotels and ships them to needy families across the globe. In less than two years, the operation has distributed 6 million soap bars to poverty-stricken places ranging from homeless shelters in Los Angeles to slums in Haiti.
The concept was spawned by Shawn Seipler, then a traveling businessman who one day wondered what happened to all the soap that hotels throw out.
It was a small observation that led to big numbers and a bigger cause.
Upon doing some research, Seipler found that diarrheal disease was the second leading cause of death among Third World children under 5, right behind pneumonia.
"I learned that 9,000 children a day die from diarrhea -- and that 60 percent of those deaths could have been prevented with proper use of a bar of soap," he recalled.
Seipler and co-founder, Houston businessman Paul Till, called 30 hotel groups around the country and found that every one of them was throwing their soap bars and hair-care bottles out with the trash.
Till and Seipler subsequently calculated that up to 1.5 million bars of soap were being discarded by U.S. hotels every day.
Seeing a sustainable nexus between public health and the environment, Seipler took a crash course in rebatching and reprocessing soap. He also reached out to hotel chains across North America, and found partners eager to participate in a venture that would send sanitized bars to needy corners of the world.
Of the more than 400 hotel properties working with Clean the World, 147 are in Florida. Disney hotels alone account for 20,000 rooms.
Other chains include Harrahs Entertainment, Mandarin Oriental, Westgate Resorts and Four Seasons.
Paying a program fee of 65 cents per room per month, participating hotels send discarded soap and shampoo bottles to Clean the World's reprocessing plant in Orlando. That facility currently churns out 10,000 to 12,000 reconditioned bars a day.
The soaps, primarily in the form of 2 oz.-bars, are disinfected and re-formed. Shampoo and conditioner bottles are also sanitized for distribution. Another recycling center operates in Vancouver, B.C., and additional facilities are scheduled to open soon in Las Vegas and Toronto.
But Clean the World's evolving process, which has a patent pending, is spreading across the globe. Seipler, the nonprofit's executive director, notes that a hotel in South Korea, using a portable disinfectant process that employs a restaurant-grade steamer, is sending its discarded soaps to India.
Distribution is achieved through a network of global distribution partnerships, including Floating Doctors, Cap Haitien Health Network operating in Haiti, and World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organization, which also has helped deliver hundreds of pallets of soap to homeless shelters, womens shelters and missions in the United States.
In addition to Haiti -- Clean the World's chief foreign recipient -- soaps have been delivered to more than 30 countries, such as Pakistan, Armenia, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, Uganda, Lesotho and Swaziland.
About 40 percent of the product is distributed to needy communities in this country.
Seipler said he gets calls "almost daily" from hoteliers interested in joining the program. In addition to the obvious altruistic motives, "it can be a tax deduction for them," he notes.
Plus, the program saves disposal costs and landfill space.
Matt Gomez, a spokesman for Clean the World, calculates that the venture has collected and recycled more than 35 tons of soaps and more than 24 tons of shampoos and conditioners from Florida hotels. That's a combined 59 tons diverted from the state's landfills.
After 19 months of operation, Clean the World has grown to 20 employees, with plans to hire more workers to staff its new recycling centers. "And we've done it without a dime of stimulus money," Seipler adds.
Ultimately, the native Floridian sees his nonprofit venture joined by a for-profit arm that would "monetize the product."
"We're looking at capital investment groups and bridge financing to build out the facilities," he said.
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Contact Kenric Ward at kward@sunshinestatenews.com or at (772) 801-5341.
