Soap for HopeTM and Linens for LifeTM: Improving the environment and enhancing health

Over 7 million children die each year from diseases that can be prevented with simple hand washing. Handwashing with soap is among the most effective and inexpensive ways to prevent diarrhoea and respiratory diseases in the developing countries, where millions of children per year suffer from diseases that could have been prevented with proper handwashing. Every year a typical 400 room hotel generates 3.5 tons of solid soap waste, this waste either goes to a landfill, or is shipped to a recycling facility which is costly for the hotels. But there is a simpler more effective solution. By using a simple soap press, the waste soap can be converted into soap bars, these soap bars are then distributed to poor villages. The soap bars form part of a broader education programme that teaches young children basic hygiene practices, such as how to wash their hands correctly. Similarly, Linens for Life is a programme that recycles linens discarded from hotels into new clean and useful products. This programme can help teach skills in laundry and sewing for unemployed people and the resulting products can then be resold and/or distributed, to places where they are needed, for example to remote health clinics where they can be used in childbirth and maternity post-partum care, to reduce the incidences of infection and sepsis.

These programmes operates within several major hotel chains and include several well known hotels groups through Vietnam, such as the Hilton, Accor, IHG, Silk Path, Melia and Lotte groups including more than 30 hotels in Vietnam. The programme therefore saves money for the hotel chains, reduces their environmental impacts, provides employment for disadvantaged people and improves the health of children. So successful are these projects, that a new initiative was launched in July by Mr Stefan Phang, Sustainability and CSR director of Diversey and also director of all program. This initiative is the Coffee Briques programme, in which used coffee grounds are pressed together with an easily available organic binder, to produce a briquette which can be used as a useful household fuel. In July, with representative of Mr Stefan Phang, Soap for HopeTM and Linens for LifeTM had a journey from Sapa, Hanoi, Hoi An, Da Nang, Nha Trang and Hochiminh to launch the program and deliver soap bars with new hotel partners such as Silk Path Grand and Resort Sapa, Sunway Hanoi, Meliá Hanoi, Meliá Da Nang Resort, Ibis Styles Nha Trang and Intercontinental Sai Gon.

These programmes save money for the hotel chains, reduces their environmental impacts, provides employment for disadvantaged people and improves the health and well-being of people in poorer communities particularly children and women. They illustrate the perfect combination of private enterprise, social enterprises and local communities working together to produce sustainable local solutions to environmental responsibility and health.

`Partnering with CCIHP in both the Soap For HopeTM and Linens For LifeTM programs is a great milestone for us as they have a strong presence in Vietnam, where the need for healthcare, sanitation and livelihood enhancement is crucial, especially in the rural and ethnic communities. 

The volunteers from CCIHP have taken pride and ownership in both the programs, travelling deep into villages and communities to conduct the demonstrations, as well as helping hotels run their charity events and bazaars, where Soap For Hope and Linens For Life products are made and sold to raise funds for the disadvantaged. I am very proud of the CCIHP volunteers, and I thank them all sincerely.`

Mr Stefan Phang, Sustainability and CSR Director, Diversey