Unlimited access to tiny individually-wrapped soaps is one of the many perks of a hotel stay. But what happens to soaps that aren’t used (or pilfered) during your visit? The answer may surprise you.
More than two million partially used bars of soap are discarded at North American hotels each day, according to the Global Soap Project. Even if hotel soaps haven’t been used, quality control standards usually prohibit cleaning staff from reusing the same soaps for multiple guests – especially if the paper wrapping is wet or opened. So, unused and partially used soaps are often destined for the landfill.
But Hilton Worldwide is planning to change all that at its 3,750 hotels by partnering with the Global Soap Project to recycle old soaps for a cause, the company announced on Tuesday. The Atlanta-based nonprofit will collect partially used soaps from Hilton and its subsidiaries, sanitize them and reprocess them into new bars – which are then distributed in developing countries.