Each day, thousands of hotels in America throw away millions of pounds of soap and shampoo, which end up in landfills or contaminating groundwater systems. And each day, people around the world die because they do not have the basics needed for simple sanitation.

Last week, a group of GraceStudents volunteered at Clean the World, a unique ministry in Orlando that helps solve both of these problems.

“A team from GraceStudents helped recycle slightly used bars of soap that thousands of hotels send to Clean The World,” says Brent Upham, Assistant Director of GraceStudents. The students shaved down the surface level of the soap to ready them for steam sanitizers. Then bars are re-packaged to be delivered to children around the world who suffer from diseases that are simply curable/preventable by basic hygiene. To date, Clean the World has eliminated over 340 tons of waste and has sent out more than 7 million bars of soap to impoverished countries and ministries.

“Clean the World is headquartered so close to us, but it has a worldwide impact,” says Brent. “We hope that GraceStudents can volunteer for them on a regular basis.”

Clean the World partners with some of the world’s best known hotels, including Starwood, Mandarin, Sheraton, and the Walt Disney World Hotels. You can find out more about them and their mission to save lives at cleantheworld.org.