Great story from Cornell on how recycling soap helps children around the world!

From the aticle:

“That’s a lot of soap,” says Rebecca Rypkema, director of rooms who has headed the recycling initiative. Clean the World, however, doesn’t limit itself to soap.

The program working with Statler also discards shampoo and lotion as waste and recycles their plastic bottles.

Current data shows that, in collaboration with the company, the Statler has recycled more than 988 pounds of waste (shampoo and lotion) and 388 pounds of plastic. The used soaps are melted (and thus sanitized), made into new soap bars and distributed to communities in more than 55 countries.

Diarrhea kills about 760,000 children annually around the world, according to the World Health Organization. This preventable and treatable condition is the second leading cause of death among children under five years old.

Roger Soule of Statler Hotel housekeeping said that room attendants separate the soap bars and bottle products into two separate bins. Then, every week the bins are sent to Clean the World, which redistributes the products.

Great article on a growing and necessary trend in business. 

From the post:

So what does it mean to be a B Corp? By registering as a Benefit Corporation, a company is committing itself to:

~ Creating a material positive impact on society and the environment 

~ Expanding its fiduciary duty to require consideration of non-financial interests when making decisions 

~ Reporting on its overall social and environmental performance using recognized third party standards

Two billion tons go into the trash yearly and thirty percent of that trash consists of paper that could have been recycled.

Researchers Remi Trudel and Jennifer Argo at BU conducted studies to understand and develop a theory about why people throw out certain recyclable material into the trash and other recyclable material into the recycling bin.

Their experiments showed that human participants threw out fragmented papers and disfigured cans into the trash. Trudel and Argo believe that this pattern in behavior is due to the way how people use heuristic technique to determine how useful a product is. People view dented cans and small bits of paper as being useless, and incorrectly assume that those materials cannot be recycled. 

The dedicated sustainability experts at Cornell University would like to know your thoughts on adding Red Frowny Face on trash bins.  

Share your thoughts at:

http://www.sustainablecampus.cornell.edu/blogs/news/posts/are-you-recycling-properly