Where do unused hotel soaps go?

When staying at a hotel, you’ll find all kinds of toiletries in the bathroom. But have you ever wondered where the unused soap ends up? Hotel staff might tell guests to simply throw them in the trash, but statistics show that just in places like Hong Kong, hotels accumulate nearly 16,000 kilograms of used soap per year — enough for 48,000 children to use for an entire year. With the rise of eco-conscious travel in recent years, these “old soaps” have found a new life.

How can used hotel soap be given new value? In 2009, a U.S. company launched a soap recycling program that collects discarded soap from hotels, dissolves it, and remanufactures it. To date, the initiative has partnered with over 4,000 hotels in places such as India, Las Vegas, Hong Kong, Orlando, and Montreal.

Hotels pay the recycling organizations about 75 cents USD per room per month, which also includes unused shampoo, conditioner, and body wash. These products are then redistributed to homeless shelters around the world.

After being repackaged, these small soaps are sent to charities and non-governmental organizations. Over the past eight years, more than 40 million bars of soap have been produced and distributed to international children’s organizations and anti-hunger groups in 115 countries, including Kenya and Haiti.

Additionally, in Hong Kong, a business professor founded “Soap Cycling” (再皂福), which recycles soap from hotels in Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Japan, and China. Last year (2016), they collected nearly 16,000 kilograms of soap. Volunteers shave off the outer layer of the used soap and reprocess it to provide hygiene products for local elderly people, the homeless, and migrant workers in Hong Kong.