Shawn Seipler with recycled soap products is on a mission to save human lives with soap and also maintain environmental cleanliness from soap waste of the hotel.
How to save a human life with soap is to campaign for the importance of washing hands before eating so that germs can disappear and not enter the mouth while eating.
This movement began about ten years ago as a small gesture with some friends and family in his car garage in Orlando, Florida, United States. He uses a meat grinder, potato peeler and stove to recycle used soap into soap that is clean from germs and dirt and turns into soap that is ready for use again.
Recycled Soap and Clean the World Movement
The initiative has now become a movement and is called the Clean the World movement. The movement has developed and has been conducting industrial recycling facilities in Las Vegas, Orlando, and Hong Kong, cities where hotels are numerous and use soap bars which are then collected easily by thousands of people and then handed over to the recycling factory.
As a frequent traveler, while working at a technology company, Seipler thought about it when he was on his way to Minneapolis.
“I picked up the phone and called the receptionist and asked what happened to the soap when I finished using it” and they said that they just threw it away.I finally thought about what steps I could take to save those unused wastes which certainly were not small.
Seipler, now CEO of the group, said that after several studies he found that millions of used soap bars from hotels around the world were sent to landfills every day while many people in developing countries were dying of illness. The disease can potentially be prevented if they have access to simple hygiene products such as bath soap.
So the mission began to help save lives with soap and even half-used bottle facilities such as shampoo, and of course, directly and indirectly, protect the earth from the accumulation of industrial waste from the soap bar.
“This is a big problem,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and specialist in infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. “One of the most common types of disease in the world is a disease that is transmitted from person to person and also to yourself because of the germs if the hand is not cleaned.”
Recycled Soap and Hygiene Movement in Developing Countries
In the US and other developed countries, Schaffner notes, people can just take hygiene products because there is soap everywhere. There is plenty of soap in public toilets and even cleaning wipes at the entrance of the grocery store to clean the shopping cart.
Not the same cases in some other countries, especially in developing countries where Schaffner remembers visiting hospitals in the Middle East and found that soap supplies were very limited so patients had to provide themselves.
“This is a fundamental part of infection transmission disorders that can save many lives,” he said. “It’s not a magic stick, but it’s a very important element.”
Clean the world is now partnering with similar Global Soap organizations to increase production, education, and delivery of hygiene throughout the world.
The joint group is now collecting used soap from more than 4,000 hotels and has sent about 25 million bars of soap to 99 countries, including homeless shelters in the United States.
This process is quite simple with collected soap shredded first then run through a machine to remove residual bacteria before being pressed into new soap bars and packaged for shipping.
The group uses local staff and non-governmental organizations to assist distribution, along with sending their own teams to rural communities around the world to personally provide hygiene products and teach residents the importance of maintaining cleanliness.
“Many people were surprised to learn that one of the most effective ways to prevent many deaths is actually just washing your hands with soap,” said one worker from Global Soap, Sam Stephens. The company hopes to be able to provide a change towards a better direction for the world with this recycled soap.
