Now this is an awesome idea!

While reading forums yesterday I ran across a post about an organization called Clean the World. Here's what the front page of their site says:

Clean the World recycles soap and saves lives.

Every day in North America, thousands of hotels discard millions of pounds of soap and shampoo. These products often end up in already overflowing landfills and contaminate fragile groundwater systems.
Impoverished people around the world die every day from acute respiratory infection and diarrheal disease because they have no soap. The death toll is staggering. Each year more than five million lives are lost to these diseases with the majority of deaths being among children less than five years old. Studies have shown that simple hand washing substantially reduces the spread of these diseases. Unfortunately, the essential items for proper hand washing are unobtainable for millions of people worldwide.

Clean the World gets soap to people who really need it.

In an effort to prevent these needless deaths from occurring, Clean the World distributes recycled soap products, along with appropriate educational materials, to impoverished countries worldwide, and to domestic homeless shelters.

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It never would have crossed my mind that there was a use for all those extra soaps most of us have laying around but here it is! All it will cost you is the postage to send your soaps but I think that's a fair price to help save lives. Not to mention, it keeps these items out of our landfills. If you live in Orlando, Huston or Atlanta you can actually go and volunteer at their center.

If you're interested, the address to send your extra soap to is:


Clean the World
8026 Sunport Dr, Ste 306
Orlando, FL 32809-8108