Turning trash into treasure

Tell us about your journey from education to being a sustainability and circular pioneer. How did that happen and where does your passion for positive impact come from?

I always wanted to become a teacher, and did actually work in education for two years after university. I then went on a three-month backpacking trip through Southeast Asia and Australia which ended up lasting over six years. In that time, I worked as a travel agent and fell in love with travel, which completely pulled the rug out from under me in terms of my own narrow-mindedness – experiencing life from other perspectives, and seeing other cultures and ways of thinking had me hooked.

While working in social media marketing for brands, hotel chains, tourism boards and travel companies I spent 18 months travelling through Asia, where I had three lightbulb moments after witnessing the irrefutable negative impact of plastic waste on such a beautiful part of the world:

1) I realised that the natural beauty of our planet’s beaches and environments was diminishing because of mindless plastic pollution across the region.
2) I watched and filmed a turtle trying to eat a plastic bag, most likely mistaking it for jellyfish in Moalboal Philippines.
3) I spoke with a family in a fishing village in rural Cambodia. They told me children in the village got nosebleeds and headaches, and they believed it was from the toxicity of plastic waste burned in the village because there were no waste management systems in place.

These moments changed the trajectory of my life. I wanted to keep building a career in travel, but had a deep desire to influence the industry to consider more sustainable actions, from hotel chains assessing their amenity offerings to working with tourism boards to organise clean ups. This led my partner and I to set up @BambuuBrush to inspire people all over the world to make one simple change: stop using plastic toothbrushes and replace them with bamboo brushes.

How did your experiences travelling highlight the impact of waste and plastic pollution? Do you remember what that felt like?

I felt pure disappointment that we, as a civilisation, failed people who don’t have the opportunities that we have, and that that failure is leading to the destruction of the planet and causing serious illness in impoverished communities. On the flip side, it also made me realise that we can do much more by simply educating populations on the issue at hand – one simple change multiplied by millions, and I genuinely believe that we would change the world.

How do you go from seeing that level of destruction forming an effective strategy or vision for tackling a challenge of that scale?

To be honest, we didn’t really start with a business plan or strategy. The foundation for our business was sculpted by passion and vision more so than a plan. We have a desire to inspire and empower people to create change in their own lives and understand that, when coming together, this can create behavioural change in society.

That’s why the education and workshops we deliver in schools and the clean ups we organise in communities are so important to us for creating that ripple effect. The whole premise of our vision and belief in circularity is that many people take small actions to make a difference, therefore it shouldn’t need to be daunting.

Can you tell us more about the hospitality industry and the scale of its impact on the planet?

Data sources vary, but hospitality is considered to contribute to upward of 1% of the entire global carbon emissions, and up to 15% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Within hospitality, hotels are a major contributor of the sector’s output of carbon emissions. A large part of hotels’ struggles with sustainability is waste management. In the EU, waste is the fourth largest source of emissions, and in the UK alone, hotels produce 289,700 tonnes of waste each year.

The supply chain relies heavily on packaging, which makes up 24% of the UK’s total emissions. Mass produced plastic packaging, such as hotel toiletries, poses harm to the environment by adding to CO2 emissions from their conversion from fossil fuels in the manufacturing process. As it stands, the plastic problem isn’t going away, it’s only getting worse. In 2021, plastic product manufacturing in the UK produced roughly 3.32 million metric tonnes of CO2 emissions – nearly 6% more than the previous year. We have a real opportunity to use these bleak stats as a benchmark to inspire others to take action.

Do you think people understand the extent of the challenge the industry faces and what does the sector need to do in order to bring about meaningful change?

I believe the industry largely overlooks the severity of the waste issue. Of course, there are many individuals and businesses doing great things, but it is not taken seriously enough overall. There’s not a great deal of ownership, and this lack of responsibility really hinders the progress of tackling waste effectively.

The reality is that there are so many things hotels ought to be doing, from waste segregation and recycling, to scrutinising supply chains and procurement processes, guest incentives and educational initiatives – I could go on. Because there is so much that could be done, the perception is often that it’s overwhelming. I really believe a circular approach and the concept of recycling is a method that most people can get their heads around, and therefore it’s a great place to start. A simple bit of quantitative analysis from hotels to understand any patterns in their waste habits can be really useful to understand what to prioritise tackling.

From our experience at Clean the World hotel room amenities are up there, which is why we aim to provide a service to hotels to manage this waste effectively.

What kind of impact do discarded soaps and bottled amenities have on the environment if they’re thrown away or put to landfill?

Firstly, it’s such a waste of natural resources for these amenities to be used for a couple of seconds per guest and then thrown into landfill. In 2019, plastics generated 1.8 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions – 3.4% of global emissions. The irresponsible disposal of these items contributes to climate change, and soil and water pollution due to chemicals and microplastics releases, harming wildlife and ecosystems on a significant scale.

By recycling and repurposing these amenities to give them a second life we can reduce their environmental footprint, conserve resources, and promote a more sustainable future that not only helps the planet, but aids vulnerable people to combat hygiene-related diseases like cholera and pneumonia.

Tell us how Clean the World helps mitigate this problem and expand on the initiatives and programmes you have with participating hotels.

We work with almost 9,000 hotels globally (1.4 million hotel rooms are processed daily) to collect used soap bars and plastic bottled amenities from hotel rooms to divert them from landfills. The soap is recycled into new bars of soap and donated to global NGOs, such as The WASH Foundation which works to combat hygiene-related diseases, whilst the plastic is turned into a commercial grade flake that can be recycled into new plastic products. The goal is to create plastic products that also have a social impact.

Clean the World’s Global Hospitality Recycling Programme has so far prevented over 12.1million kilograms of bottled amenities and soap waste from going to landfill. The 84 million new bars of soap that Clean the World has manufactured were donated to children and families around the world who have no access to basic hygiene.

How does the soap recycling process work?

Participating hotels drop their soaps and bottled amenities in collection bins, which are shipped to our operations centres and weighed for impact. While collected plastic amenity bottles are prevented from going to landfills and can be recycled by being processed into flakes that can be used to manufacture new products, the soap we received is recycled into new bars of soap.

Our recycling and manufacturing multi-step process includes grinding the soap into pellets, and refining it to eliminate any foreign particles, then we sterilise the pellets, refine again, and finally manufacture the new soap bars, which are subject to a rigorous testing audit. We proudly maintain zero soap and plastic to landfill.

What are the main challenges the communities you and organisations like The WASH Foundation work with face?

UNICEF reports that over 1,000 children under the age of five die every day from hygiene-related diseases – 400,000 every year. These are mindless deaths that could often be prevented through basic hygiene practices like handwashing, but around 689 million children globally don’t have access to soap and clean water. I’d hope that this statistic doesn’t sit comfortably with anyone, especially when knowing how many billions of soap bars are discarded by hotels.

With a goal to combat the growing global waste problem in the hospitality industry, while supporting communities in need globally, the circular concept of Clean the World was born. As a result of the brilliant work of these foundations and volunteers, over the past four years alone 347,650 hygiene kits with our bars of soap have been distributed, more than 3.2 million individuals have been supported and over 11,000,000 gallons of water have been saved through recycling bars of soap.

How important is a more sustainable hospitality industry, and how will Clean the World play a role in driving that change?

So important! Storytelling is a key part of our journey towards becoming a sustainable society and we need to be able to educate and inspire people to take action. Clean the World’s story is inspiring – and so importantly – is a tangible solution to a vast problem, creating positives from negatives and refusing to stop growing our impact.

Data can be very powerful and is beginning to be a key catalyst in driving businesses and individuals to comprehend the severity of the problem, as well as the potential of their actions. Through our impact reporting system, which allows hotels to visually see the waste/recycling stats they have created, hotels are given an immense opportunity to tell their own impact story to stakeholders, guests and staff. Hopefully this will ensure more initiatives within the industry, start new sustainable operations and businesses and help put sustainability at the forefront of business.

bambuubrush.com

cleantheworld.org