In most cases, the leftover soap in the hotel is thrown away either by the user or by the staff.
However, there is a way to use it better — by donating it to Samir Lakhani’s Eco Soap Bank.
The bank collects partially used soaps from different locations, and sanitises and sterilises them to make fresh soaps.
These freshly made soaps are then distributed to people who cannot afford to buy them.
The idea for Eco Soap Bank came to Samir when he was on a visit to rural parts of Columbia in 2014.
He saw a woman bathing her infant using toxic laundry detergent because she did have the money to buy a bar of soap.
After some research, he realised that only one per cent of the population of developing countries have access to bathing soaps.
He also found that most soaps provided in hotels and motels to the guests free of cost either remain unused or partially used and go to waste.
This pushed him further down this path and he decided to start the soap bank in 2014 from a hotel bathroom in Siem Reap.
“No child should suffer from a preventable illness because there wasn’t any soap availability,” he says.
Currently, they have 16 recycling branches in 10 countries including India and Nepal.
In the past decade, they have recycled 1.4 million pounds of soap and have received nine million soap donations.