IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) has announced a partnership with Clean the World to recycle partially-used soaps and bottled amenities from hotel guest rooms and distribute them in communities with limited access to hygiene products.Clean the World Foundation Inc. is a 501 (c) (3) charitable organization that is committed to stopping the spread of preventable diseases by collecting, recycling and distributing hotel guest room amenities to children and families in the United States, Canada and more than 45 countries worldwide. Through its sustainable and socially responsible efforts, including a patented method of sterilizing soaps during the recycling process to remove potential germs and pathogens, Clean the World has helped divert more than 1.4 million lbs. of hotel waste from local landfills.
Through this partnership, IHG has the potential to add 3,274 properties in the United States and Canada, representing 407,840 rooms, to Clean the World’s growing list of more than 1,400 hospitality partners throughout North America. IHG brands that can participate in the program include:
– InterContinental® Hotels & Resorts
– Hotel Indigo®
– Crowne Plaza® Hotels & Resorts
– Holiday Inn® Hotels and Resorts
– Holiday Inn Express®
– Staybridge Suites®
– Candlewood Suites®
The agreement lends corporate support for all IHG brands to join the Clean the World hospitality partnership program, which provides implementation training, supplies and shipping for guest room amenities collected each day at participating properties. Nearly 70 IHG branded properties are already involved with Clean the World, and have helped collect 268,517 soap bars and divert more than 40.5 tons of hotel waste from local landfills.
Clean the World aligns well with IHG’s Green Engage program, a comprehensive online sustainability system which measures, manages and reports on the conservation efforts of individual properties within the IHG family of brands. Through Green Engage, IHG has set a goal of reducing solid waste by 50 percent for each participating hotel. By recycling hotel soaps and bottled amenities with Clean the World, participating IHG properties will make significant progress in meeting this goal, while improving living conditions for communities in need.
“Through programs like Green Engage and this new partnership with Clean the World, IHG continues to address our sustainability priorities at the hotel level,” says Paul Snyder, vice president, Corporate Responsibility, IHG. “Our hotel owners and guests have made eco-awareness a priority in their lives, and we welcome that kind of social responsibility in all that we do and offer throughout our brand portfolio. This partnership is a great opportunity to leverage our scale to both reduce the impact on the environment and provide a benefit for global communities.”
Each day, 9,000 children around the world die from acute respiratory illness and diarrheal diseases that can be prevented by washing with bar soap. Clean the World has a mission to put soap in the hands of people who need it most to improve and promote hygiene and sanitary living conditions and to lessen the impact of disease.
“IHG brings its impressive and well-known portfolio of hotels to our global hygiene revolution,” says Shawn Seipler, Co-founder and CEO at Clean the World. “By recognizing the value of amenities recycling, and encouraging individual IHG properties to join our partnership program, IHG displays tremendous corporate support for social responsibility and a concern for protecting our planet. As a leader in the global hospitality industry, IHG’s embrace of Clean the World will signal to its loyal guests that sustainability is a shared commitment and that every day is Earth Day when you stay at an IHG hotel.”
Clean the World recently achieved a major milestone with the global distribution of more than 10 million soap bars in just three years of operation. The soaps are often packaged as part of sustainable hygiene kits, which include recycled bottled amenities and other hygiene-related items collected from Clean the World hotel partners throughout North America. Recent distributions of soaps and hygiene kits have been made to communities in Dominican Republic, East Timor, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Kenya, Madagascar, Nicaragua and Sierra Leone.
