Clean the World, the leading recycler of soap and plastic bathroom amenities in the hotel industry, recently celebrated its 14th anniversary and continues to make a major contribution to the industry’s sustainability and social responsibility. “We give out about seven million bars of soap every year to our WASH Foundation, which is the charitable arm of our organization, and the Foundation gets that soap into the hands of those that are in need, from Maui to the Philippines to Ukraine and everywhere in between,” said Robert Montgomery, vice president of hospitality and product, Clean the World.
The organization receives used soap and plastic amenities for recycling from all the major hotel companies globally, Montgomery noted. “All of our soap is recycled and turned into new bars of soap. We’re also committed to diverting 100 percent of the plastic that we receive from hotel partners from landfill waste.”
To help hotel partners track their impact and work with Clean the World more effectively, the organization recently launched a new Live Impact Dashboard. “Our portal now has all of the impact data that a hotel partner would look for,” said Montgomery. “So, for example, it’ll tell you how many pounds of soap you’ve collected year to date, and how many bars have been distributed based on what you’ve given us. It’ll tell you how many hygiene kits you’ve supported, and so on. It also has the ability to format and send reports out automatically. We’ve actually partnered with a couple of very large hotel companies where we’ve developed the APIs to automatically feed their hotels’ impact data directly into the corporate server.” The Dashboard also indicates which of the United Nations’ 17 SDGs (Sustainability Development Goals) a hotelier is contributing to by partnering with Clean the World, whether it’s no poverty (No. 1), good health and well-being (No. 3), responsible consumption and production (No. 12), etc. On the logistical side, the tool “has buttons for ordering boxes and scheduling pickup,” Montgomery added. “We can also talk to our customers through our portal. … It’s helped us grow exponentially and really helps keep the levels of engagement up.”
