Revealed: What happens to used hotel soap
We’re all guilty of it – barely using those mini bars of hotel soap. A new video has revealed what happens to them, and it’s not for the squeamish.
A TikTok post has revealed what happens to many of the half used hotel soaps guests leave behind. And while some have celebrated it, it’s left a few people feeling less than fresh.
A Science Insider video on TikTok recently pulled back the curtain on one of Clean the World’s recycling soap factories.
Clean the World is a Florida based organisation that collects old hotel soaps, breaks them down, disinfects them and moulds them into new bars, reports the New York Post.
“Hotels throw out millions of bars of used soap every week,” a Science Insider reporter says in the video. “But they don’t have to go in the trash”.
“The used soap comes from thousands of hotels around the world, adding up to about 1.4 million rooms.”
The process starts when the used bars are placed into a machine called a refiner, which grates the soaps and cleans any dirt and hair left on the top layers.
The refiner then pushes out even noodle-like strands, which are then heated and mixed into water. They are also bleached for seven or eight minutes to kill bacteria.
The sanitised batch then travels to another refiner before being moulded into good-as-new, individual bars of soap.
Uploaded last month, the TikTok has more than 22.7 million views — and thousands of comments from users not feeling soap-er stellar about the process.
“Aaaaand I’m bringing my own soap,” one person declared.
“Way simpler to stop using solid soap in hotels and just use the liquid one in sealed dispensers attached to the wall,” someone else suggested.
“The idea of someone’s pub hairs making it in just rubs me the wrong way,” another shuddered.
Meanwhile, others called the recycled process “amazing,” “genius” and “really smart.”
Clean the World, however, has stressed that it’s good-as-new bars don’t go back to hotels.
Rather, it states on its website, it distributes the reformed soaps to children and family in countries that have high death rates due to pneumonia and cholera.
A key recommendation of the World Health Organisation to prevent these diseases is simply to increase the level of handwashing.
Clean the World states it receives soap and shampoo from more than 8000 hotels and has distributed 70 million bars to 127 countries since 2009.
A similar organisation operates in Australia called Soap Aid. It also collects soap bars from Australian hotels and recycles them.
Soap Aid has said it has distributed almost 3 million new bars and diverted 290 tonnes of soap from landfill sites.
This story was first published by the New York Post and is reproduced with permission.
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