One Central Florida group has found a way to give unused and discarded soaps and shampoos from Walt Disney World Resort hotels a new lease on life. And Disney’s dedicated group of VoluntEARS are helping with the initiative.
Disney VoluntEARS, Disney’s company-wide program for employee volunteerism, work with Clean the World, an Orlando-based nonprofit, to collect, sanitize, and repackage discarded toiletries from the nearly 28,000 hotel rooms on Disney property, in order to distribute them to people in need domestically and worldwide.
All of the Walt Disney World Resort hotels participate in this innovative recycling program. The group’s goal is to improve the health and personal hygiene in impoverished areas, both domestically and abroad, by simply providing a crucial, yet sometimes hard-to-obtain necessity: soap. To date in 2010, Disney resorts have donated 25,710 pounds of soap, shampoo, conditioner, and lotion to Clean the World’s cause.
Clean the World teams have recently traveled to Haiti to put their mission into action. In an effort to help contain a cholera outbreak in Haiti stemming from conditions following this year’s massive earthquake, the team is delivering more than 100,000 bars of sanitized soap to orphanages, clinics, and schools. As Clean the World’s Executive Director Shawn Seipler is quick to point out, soap cannot cure cholera; but it certainly can help prevent the spread of this and other diseases.
Because Disney is one of the chief suppliers for Clean the World, it’s safe to say that more bars from the resort will be en route to Haiti soon. Clean the World is planning to deliver an additional 200,000 bars of soap to the recovering island nation next month.
