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Soap and Sustainability: Shawn Seipler of Clean the World

• Jeff Borman and Matt Brown

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Have you ever pondered the fate of your hotel soap after check-out? Shawn Seipler did, big time, and it launched him on an extraordinary mission to improve global hygiene. The Clean the World founder joins us to talk about how its Global Hospitality Program works with over 8,000 participants to upcycle soap and tackle some of the deadliest problems on the planet.

https://cleantheworld.org
https://www.instagram.com/clean_the_world/

Matt Brown:

Hi everybody, welcome to no Show. I'm Matt Brown, joined as always by Jeff Foreman. doesn't sleep. That's the only explanation. It's got to be Because for over 15 years, he is seemingly everywhere, working to advance humanitarian, social and environmental causes. In 2009, in his garage, he created Clean the World, and now Clean the World leads a global hygiene revolution and offers sustainable, socially conscious programs aiming to prevent millions of deaths caused by hygiene-related illnesses each year. Sean and Clean the World have been featured on CBS Evening News, cnn, fox, national Geographic, yahoo Finance, the Washington Post, the LA Times, npr, the New York Times, kelly Clarkson as I said, he is everywhere. He's also I'll say it. It's bold, but I'll say it. I think he's the world's most passionate Miami Dolphins fan. There are a lot of them out there, but I think he might be at the top of that pyramid. We'll find out about that and more today with our guest, sean Seifler. Welcome to no Show.

Shawn Seipler:

Matt, thank you for having me. Jeff, thank you for having me, looking forward to spending some time with you guys today.

Jeff Borman:

Sean, it is your passion that brings us together today. You left such an indelible mark when I heard you speak at a Hilton event about six or seven years ago, maybe eight years ago Maybe the most inspirational approach to sustainability, and I think you know, for what I do for a living and my own personality, the way you have taken this vision of using what's there right. Some of the solutions are so hard to find because we have to dream up new ways to go do things. When you found something to do with what's here, just do it better. I've been inspired by you and by Clean the World for quite a while and it's a pleasure to have you.

Shawn Seipler:

Thanks, jeff. I really appreciate that. I think one of the beauties of what we do at Clean the World is how simple it is, and it was to design. It needed to be very simple, I think, for a simple-minded person like myself to get around it, but certainly it drives a lot of emotion and passion and energy from myself and our team members as we go about our global hygiene revolution. So, again, excited to be here and share more and tell you more about it.

Jeff Borman:

So let's start with what is Clean the World the global hospitality program.

Shawn Seipler:

How does it work? Start with what is Clean the World, the global hospitality program. How does it work? Yeah, so we're a global impact social enterprise and we're comprised of several companies and brands, but we come in every single day with a very clear vision and mission, and that's to make the world a better place. We launched 15 years ago in a single car garage in downtown Orlando. At the time, just prior to our launching, I ran a global sales team for a technology company that later was purchased by Google and has become the insides of Google Shopping. So, as you use Google Shopping, that originated from a company by the name of Channel Intelligence that I ran global sales for and just happened to be on the road in a hotel room four nights a week.

Shawn Seipler:

I had a desire to start my own business. I wanted to do something entrepreneurial. I have been an entrepreneur going back to, I think seven or eight years old is, when I had my first substantial and competitive business, which was a lemonade stand turned food stand, turned Disney merchandise stand in Arlington, texas. But I wanted to start my own business. I thought about, as an entrepreneur, what area would be really good to sort of think about in a future view, and to me that was within green energy sustainability. Environmentalism by the way, not being sort of an environmentalist or a socially driven individual was more from an entrepreneurial perspective, and so that's when I started looking for items of waste and in a hotel room one night I called the front desk and asked what happened to the bar soap and bottle shampoo when I was done using it, and they said that was thrown away. I thought that was interesting and that was really the curiosity that launched what now, 15 years later, is a pretty incredible global impact company.

Jeff Borman:

So, first of all, the hotel you're in me, the business side of me we need more people like you staying four nights a week in hotels. So that's not our conversation today, but I need to hear more stories that start that way.

Shawn Seipler:

Yeah Well, and I with the technology company. Bestbuycom was actually the account that I managed and I was at quite a bit. So I am a thin-blooded South Floridian-born young man also, thus the passion around the Miami Dolphins. But I had to spend 40, 50 nights a year alone in Minneapolis. So if you envision that thin-blooded Floridian there in Minneapolis during those harsh February evenings, it's bundled up in a hotel room, it's ordering cocktails and it's getting your mind to wander on a bunch of things. And that was a successful wander that particular night.

Shawn Seipler:

At that time in 2009, there were 4.6 million hotel rooms in the US, and when I did the back of envelope math of 4.6 million hotel rooms with a 60% occupancy rate and about a 1.2 average night of stay If all the soap was being thrown away, I concluded that there was at least a million bars of soap being thrown away every day across the US and possibly several million more across the globe, and so that again got me really motivated over the following days and weeks to figure out what could I do with all the soap that was being thrown away. So let's go there.

Jeff Borman:

What do you do with all this soap that would be getting thrown away?

Shawn Seipler:

Well, the first thing you have to do is you figure out is there a way to recycle soap? I mean taking somebody's bar of soap that was used in their shower, in their bathroom. You start from a pretty dark place and go okay, how do I turn that significantly icky trash into something that is useful? So it started by figuring out could we recycle? And I found very amateur basic ways to recycle soap, called rebatching, and it's nothing more than melting the bar down and reforming it into a new bar of soap, and when you do that, you cook out impurities and you reform and can remake a bar. So that was sort of an easy answer. Then it became okay. If we were able to recycle soap here effectively, efficiently, etc. Who would purchase a used bar of soap? Where would a used bar of soap go? Or a recycled bar of soap go?

Shawn Seipler:

We came across a study, and then a second and then a third, and if I recall it was at least 10 studies that we found that at that time, in 2009, showed that there were 9,000 children under the age of five dying to hygiene-related illnesses, specifically pneumonia and diarrheal disease.

Shawn Seipler:

And all of these studies showed that if we just gave them soap and taught them how and when to wash their hands, that we could cut those deaths in half. What started as an entrepreneurial, business-minded hey, this is sort of in the green space. Let's take something, let's recycle it, let's then figure out a new revenue stream with it, very quickly turned into wow. There is a major social impact, philanthropic result that can come out of this to the tune of saving millions of children's lives. It was pretty clear that as we went down that road, soap does save lives, and if we could figure out how to get the soap from hotels, recycle it and get it in the hands of those 9,000 children that are going to die on a daily basis it was 5.5 million children a year that we would be able to literally save millions of children's lives. And at that point it really had a little more formation, at least in terms of purpose, and then it was okay how are we going to get legs on this thing and make it happen?

Matt Brown:

With over 8,000 hotels participating, Jeff and I were wondering is there any reason for a hotel not to do this, and I'm sure you've heard a litany of objections over the years. What were those objections when you started and what are they now, if any, and have they changed or are they pretty consistent?

Shawn Seipler:

So the hospitality industry is comprised of a lot of really amazing and good people and everybody wants to make an impact. So you have this incredible group who are conscious, socially conscious and environmentally conscious of the waste that is being consumed, of the things that are being consumed within hotels, the thought of reducing landfill waste and, in the case of soap, very clearly making a life-saving item. There's not a person in the hospitality industry that I've met that does not completely buy into, that wants to do, that thinks that's a really great thing. Where the hiccups come is there's a cost to it. We have to run a global business. We have to collect soap and ship soap and we have to remanufacture soap and we have employees that have to do that.

Shawn Seipler:

And as we sit today, we've graduated out of the single car garage. We now have recycling centers in Orlando, Las Vegas, Montreal, Punta Cana, Amsterdam, Hong Kong. We can manage the 8,000 hotels and the 1.4 million hotel rooms on a daily basis. So there is a cost. The hotels have to pay to have the soap and the plastic diverted from landfill and recycled, and so that has been the cost has been the only detractor to anybody not coming on board. There really has not been another reason why somebody would not come on. And it makes sense. I mean, everybody has a P&L, Everybody has to watch their costs and where their money goes, and so that is really the only reason why that we have heard as to why somebody would not recycle their soap and their plastic with Clean the World.

Jeff Borman:

I think that what you ask a hotel to do is it starts with a housekeeper. If I understand it right, it's take the soap, put it in a box, or put it in a bag that'll go in a box for shipping. Are labor unions friendly to your model when it changes the exact actions that they are allowed to take?

Shawn Seipler:

So we have found. So your description of what a room attendant does with our product is precisely right. When they are cleaning that room, they're going to take that used soap, that used plastic and either throw it away or they're going to throw it into another bag. And when they walk that bag back of house, they're going to put it into a box that will end up being shipped out to one of our centers. With respect to the labor unions, which we've seen a lot more interaction with in, for instance, Manhattan, New York, where we have, I think, 100 hotel partners, or Vegas, where we have primarily the entire Vegas Strip, those are a couple areas that are pretty unionized. We have found it as a very smart additive. Hey, they're not doing much more. They're really not doing a lot more work. They're touching this stuff and either throwing it away or they're throwing it in another bag that's going to a different location. That's how it's been described.

Shawn Seipler:

It has tended to be something very positive to the room attendants when they understand the mission and when they understand what the purpose is and how soap will eventually go into the hands of people that are often from the countries that these people are from.

Shawn Seipler:

You know that their nationalities are. You know, for example, in the state of Florida, one third of the room attendants are Haitian, and we have sent three, four million bars of soap of the 82 million back to Haiti. So it has tended to be a very positive component in the relationship between union and hotel. As it's a great program, that's easy. There's not extra sort of steps in time that have to occur, so it doesn't really get into sort of the financial negotiations that occur in terms of you're adding another major step for us and so now we need to renegotiate what our pay rates are. But yet it's something that we're doing together to make a difference for others around the world and for our local community, and so that ends up playing very well, and so we see very positive outcomes when it comes to going into unionized labor outcomes when it comes to going into unionized labor.

Jeff Borman:

One of my favorite sustainability actions in our hotels is seeing hotels move to refillable toiletries. It's financially smart for hotels. It obviously reduces a massive amount of plastic waste with all the billions of little shampoo and conditioner bottles. Refillables have been common in Europe for a very long time. They're finally making their way in some scale here in the US. Has that impacted Clean the World?

Shawn Seipler:

So the plastic problem in the hospitality industry has been a major problem and having the organization that has dealt with more of the mixed, dirty, small-use plastic to divert it from landfill. We have done combinations of recycling, reusability. We've gone through stages early on where we would clean those bottles and reinsert them into hygiene kits that went into homeless shelters, relief organizations, women's shelters, and then we've also done energy from waste and we've put those into scenarios where we've created power out of those single-use plastics Hard to deal with. There needed to be a solution within the industry. So refillables there's two types of refillables. There's one that is very good from a health perspective and there's one that's a little bit challenging.

Shawn Seipler:

So when you talk about the refillables, we've studied those. We studied those. We published a study early 2020, right before COVID hit. We did it in partnership with University of Arizona, a gentleman by the name of Dr Gerba, who's also aka Dr Germ public soap dispensers, and his work caused a major change out of refillables from those soap dispensers and into more of those plastic cartridge replacements, because in the refilling process there is a very high degree and probability of the spreading of disease and pathogen in the refillable scenario. So when I've got a container on the wall and I open it up and I pour in on top of that more shampoo or more conditioner that has come from, usually like a ketchup bottle that I've refilled from back of house. In that transfer there is a lot of disease and pathogen that occurs.

Shawn Seipler:

If you think about it, in a manufacturing plant when you top off a shampoo bottle, you have very strict OSHA, fda regulations that occur in how that is done in that manufacturing plant. It's really not much different in a hotel. When you are refilling and topping off, you're doing the same thing. You're just doing it without the machinery, without OSHA, without the FDA, et cetera. So the refillable dispensers we're not huge fans of from a health perspective and happy to share that study with you and would encourage others to look it up.

Shawn Seipler:

There's a lot of studies out there. On the other hand, the closed loop dispenser systems so again, large format, so large plastic, not single use, so uses less plastic that are closed off do not allow the refilling to occur. Once they are completely used and done, we can take that large format plastic bottle off the wall. Put a new one on the plastic recycling element of that is much better and easier and more conducive to have the result you want versus the single use. That is the medium that I think needs to be found and needs to be landed on within the industry.

Jeff Borman:

Wow, so what you're saying is the thing that I was very excited about seeing come into the industry. Yeah, don't be so excited about it, yeah.

Shawn Seipler:

So you're excited for the right reasons, in my opinion. You're excited because of the environmental gains and because of the ability to reduce plastic and waste. The good news is we're on the right track and we're going to put information out and I know others do, and there's good data out there and I having great relationships with a lot of our manufacturers, whether that is Gilchrist or Hunter, la Bodega, l'occitane. They're coming up with great systems, they're looking at great product dispensing systems that reduce landfill waste, that are better for the environment and that are easier to recycle and are healthy and safe for the consumer. And so we've just got to. My encouragement to the entire industry is continue to track along those lines and put those solutions in place, because that's a win-win-win for everybody.

Jeff Borman:

You know it's a perfect setup for the question. I really want to know where does Clean the World go from here? Where do we all go and where do you take us?

Shawn Seipler:

Well, we my technology background has brought me into a position over the last 15 years to turn this into a product organization, an iterative and innovative product-driven organization which has diversified our business and offers fun, engaging team building events thousands of them across the globe where we build hygiene kits and backpacks and we're doing food pantry items and we do women's kits and hygiene kits and really cool things. And that's a great way for a hotelier to book more business at their hotels and leverage their meeting rooms and convention centers because now they can put on these great team building activities. Oh, by the way, we get more room rental, we get more F&B, so there's just some really good positivities with C2W events, all right. Of course, we have our global NGO, the Wash Foundation, which does incredible work, sits on the United Nations global wash cluster, drives global strategies within the aspects of water, sanitation, hygiene. We also have our Fresh Start wash and wellness mobile hygiene units, originally launched by Las Vegas Sands. We have some units in Southern Nevada, in California, in Colorado and in Florida, also sponsored by Caesars Entertainment and by Hilton, where we're giving showers to those experiencing homelessness. It's a 40-foot trailer. It's a beautiful shower, just like one in bathroom that you would see in a beautiful hotel room, and it helps those that are experiencing homelessness to help get them on the continuum from homeless to home. We've seen some incredible reductions in homelessness, specifically within the soap and plastic recycling. We're going to keep doing what we do there.

Shawn Seipler:

We think there's some really engaging ways for us to get to the hotel guest. We have a concept called track your bar of soap. We'd love to see we know when a guest leaves a room. We know when that bar gets into one of our boxes and then when one of those boxes gets into one of our recycling centers, and then when we and how we recycle it one of our recycling centers, and then when we and how we recycle it and how it gets off to somebody needs. So imagine when you check out of a hotel room, you get a message from your Hilton Honors or your Marriott Bonvoy and says, hey, your bar of soap was just collected and it's going to go to a magical place where we're going to turn trash into treasure and we'll get back in touch with you when it happens. And then, the day it arrives at our Clean the World facility, the guest gets another message. It says hey, your bar just arrived at Clean the World, where we're going to go. You know where we will go to work making the world a better place. And then we recycle that bar of soap and it goes into a box and it goes to children in the Dominican Republic. And now you get a message that says your bar of soap went to somebody in the Dominican Republic to help a child learn how to wash their hands. So if you could track your bar of soap from a hotel room out, I think that could be a really cool, engaging way for the hotelier to really connect that impact to the guest.

Shawn Seipler:

And, by the way, our program doesn't cost a lot of money. Just to put it in perspective. On average it costs a lot of money. Just to put it in perspective on average it costs about 60 to 80 cents per room per month out of a hotel. So a hundred room hotel pays about 60 to 80 bucks a month. A thousand room hotel pays between 600, 800 bucks a month and that includes all of the collection, the shipping, the training, all the PR support, the digital assets, all the things. So it's all bundled in to that very low cost.

Shawn Seipler:

And again, when it comes to our hotel brands, displaying and touting and talking about the great things that they are doing environmentally and socially. We've built a backend that supports all the data we give them, with chain of custody, auditable data on the backend. So if the SEC does come calling or other groups come calling, you're able to point back to us and we defend all that and show all that. So that's where we think we'll continue to be a big part of the industry as long as we're doing those types of things.

Matt Brown:

It's time for the mystery question. I've thought a lot about this one and this one's fun. I think you're going to like this. Roger Goodell's stepping down. You get a call. This one's fun, I think you're going to like this. Roger Goodell's stepping down. You get a call. Nfl search committee. We need new blood, fresh blood. We need you to come in and be the next NFL commissioner. You accept because you'll make $800 million a year plus a private jet, and think of all the good you could do with that money. What's your first act as NFL commissioner?

Shawn Seipler:

Well, that's a great question. So, assuming that I'm going to be very fair and objective and not stack all the chips towards the way they're putting in this year, I think are fantastic. I would go a step further and there was that whole concept of, instead of doing an on-site kick and having to declare the on-site kick, you get like a fourth and 30 from the 30-yard line or a fourth and 25 from the 25-yard line, where you could score again potentially. So if you're down late by 10 points and you've got, know, 10 points and you got to score, then you got to get an onsite kick. There's this concept that you just do a, you get one play fourth and 25. If you convert it, you keep moving. If you don't convert it, that's it. The team gets it. You know, even, I think they've said from their own 35 yard line.

Shawn Seipler:

I have four daughters they and I'm a son, so I have five total. My daughters love football, love the Miami Dolphins. There are certain things that I know that they are attracted to within the graphics of the game and the storytelling of the game and some of the personalities of the game. Certainly, I would make every team have one of its star players. Date somebody like Taylor Swift or you know. I would just I know.

Matt Brown:

I like it Mandatory.

Shawn Seipler:

You've no idea the interest that you've brought in and the the, because as a commissioner, it's about bringing the revenue in raising the salary cap and the way you do that is you've got to. You've got to get more Taylor Swifts and Ariana Grande's and you know Selena Gomez's, I think, involved Jeff, I think he's.

Matt Brown:

I think he's thought about this before I asked him this question.

Jeff Borman:

So this mystery question? I didn't know this was coming either, and when he asked I thought for sure your answer would be a ban on games played under freezing.

Shawn Seipler:

Okay Again, if I'm not stacking the chips towards the Dolphins, remember, I caveat of that. So if I can stack the chips toward Dolphins, everyone's going to a dome. Well, except the Miami Dolphins who are had his luau. Last year and the year before we went there, I bid on an away game, on a road game, and we would go to the locker room and see the players, and the game I bid on was the Kansas City Chiefs because they were Super Bowl champs, and this was before they announced that they were going to be playing in Germany. So all of a sudden the schedule comes out and we're going to Germany. Now we have an office in Amsterdam, so I take my son out to Amsterdam, it's his graduation present and we go out to Germany.

Shawn Seipler:

But at this point the whole Kelsey-Taylor-Swift thing is and I've got, I've Swifties in my house, and so you have to understand, jeff, I started as somebody that was like I don't want to hear about Taylor Swift, I want to know about Taylor Swift. She's with the enemy. Why do we care to? By the time it kind of got to the Superbowl and all that and we lost, you know. But then it was like man, everyone's really banging down on her and you know I certainly love the joy in my daughter's eyes and they all of a sudden were you know we've got to go for Taylor Swift and I'm like, ok, we may have to do that. So I've had a little evolution and metamorphosis on this whole thing.

Matt Brown:

Doesn't that love? It overcame oceans. It overcame personal preferences on music, and I'd like to just mention here at the very end that I'm sure your second act would be to announce a new nonprofit partner in the NFL galaxy Clean the World.

Shawn Seipler:

Without a doubt, and I would yes, I would certainly bring Clean the World in and make it mandatory that all NFL teams stay in hotels that recycle their soap and plastic with Clean the World.

Matt Brown:

This has been incredible. Sean, I told you everybody passion he doesn't sleep. Thank you so much for being part of the show.

Shawn Seipler:

Yeah, this has been a ton of fun. You guys are great. Really appreciate you again telling our story and having me as a part of it. Love to do it again sometime.