WHITE PLAINS, NEW YORK Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide is partnering with charity Clean the World Foundation on a new corporate agreement to collect and recycle hotel soaps, shampoos, conditioners, lotions and gels to help fight the global spread of preventable diseases. An estimated 1.6 million pounds of hotel soap may be recycled each year through this partnership.
The agreement, involving as many as 500 Starwood hotels in North America, is the first corporate agreement for Clean the World, which now has hospitality partnerships in place with more than 1,000 hotel properties around the globe. Along with providing soap to impoverished peoples, the effort to date has diverted an estimated 550 tons of hotel waste from U.S. and Canada landfills.
Clean the World is the largest global recycler of hotel amenities and, in just two years of operation, has distributed more than 8 million bars of soap to children and families in the United States and more than 40 countries worldwide, including Haiti, Japan, Zimbabwe, Uganda, India, Honduras, Mexico and Albania.
“Our North American properties represent more than 176,000 rooms, each of which offer the highest quality soaps and bottled amenities to our guests on a daily basis,” says Denise Coll, president of Starwood in North America. “This partnership amplifies our commitment to corporate social responsibility, and it also should make every member of our Starwood family feel better about the role they play each day in caring for our Earth and the people who inhabit it.”