Global Soap Project

Monday September 24th, Norcross, GA

The SIG team donated their time to the Global Soap Project, a non-profit organization that recovers and recycles soap from North American hotels that would otherwise end up in landfills. The soap is donated to vulnerable populations around the world such as refugees, orphans and disaster victims. We chose to work with this project as one of our quarterly community service projects because their objective aligns with LEED EBO&M material and resource credits to divert usable goods from landfills.

Seeing the soap recycling process in person, it just makes sense. Hotels throw away an enormous amount of barely used bar soap. Businesses can donate them to the Global Soap Project, which sorts them by color, grinds them down, cleans them twice with special screens and machinery, and then combines the material with a little water and extrudes new bars to be ship to countries in need. This one facility in the metro Atlanta area can process up to  40,000 bars per day.

As a householder, don’t fret about throwing away a sliver of soap. The real opportunity is to engage the largest consumers that produce the most amount of waste. So next time you stay in a hotel, ask them if they donate to Global Soap Project – all they have to do is go to the website and sign up. In certain areas, there is local pickup. Otherwise, they can ship the used soap bars to the Atlanta facility and write off the shipping. Stay clean, go green.

© 2012 Sustainable Investment Group (SIG). All rights reserved.