Creating Shared Value Programs

We make a meaningful impact in the world by seeking opportunities to work with the communities where we do business, as well as other areas of the world. And we encourage all of our employees to do the same.

Solenis’ Community Relations committee sets our overall direction. Our corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs drive us to work with diverse partners around to the world to improve lives in the communities where we operate. Employee volunteerism, disaster relief, and product donations are a reflection of our efforts to be a good corporate citizen. However, what differentiates us is our extension of CSR to creating shared value (CSV). By partnering with customers and NGOs, we tackle shared social and environmental challenges. Mutually beneficial programs like Soap For Hope™ and Linens For Life™ touch all three parts of sustainability with social, environmental and financial benefits.

Each year, more than 7 million children die from disease that can be prevented by simple handwashing, while a typical 400-room hotel is disposing of 3.5 tons of solid soap. The Soap For Hope program collects soap bars that would be thrown out and teaches people in at-risk communities how to reprocess them using a cold-process method – without using electricity or water – into sanitary, larger new bars. The products are then distributed in the community or taken to areas in need, helping reduce the spread of pathogens and prevent infections. Soap for Hope has been implemented in more than 800 hotels in 188 cities in 41 countries.

One of the key aspects of our program is community involvement. All projects are run directly by local nonprofits and employ underprivileged community members to do the work, giving livelihood opportunities to those who wouldn’t otherwise have the chance.

Our Soap For Hope program focuses on three core objectives:

• Saving lives - enabling hygiene through providing access to soap to communities who need soap but lack access
• Enhancing livelihood for the local community through recycling and reprocessing soap
• Helping hotels reduce waste by turning used soap into something useful again

Every year, a typical 400-room hotel generates about two to three metric tons of used linen – bedsheets, pillowcases, towels, table clothes, employee uniforms, etc. That’s a lot of linen. For our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) team, it’s also a lot of opportunity.

Normally, these linens would be sent to landfills or incinerators. However, through the Linens For Life program, many families in a community are able to earn a small livelihood by converting linens discarded by hotels into new and useful items that can be sold and hence helping them to earn an income.

The people who join Linens For Life receive basic training on how to sew and use sewing machines. Once trained, they can work to give a new lease on life to the linen donated by the hotels. Items created include tote bags and simple clothing, which are then sold to earn a small income for the people who made them.

Often this opportunity makes a real difference, helping people in need such as those who have lost everything in a natural disaster, refugees, women rescued from sex trafficking or domestic abuse situations, etc.

More than 400 billion cups of coffee are consumed globally each year. That consumption generates a serious amount of coffee grounds, most of which are thrown into the garbage which finds its way to landfills. With circular thinking, we introduced CoffeeBriques, a program that converts spent coffee grounds into eco-friendly fuel for cooking and heating. As its name suggests, spent coffee grounds are compressed into rectangular briquettes that can be used as a fuel source instead of the firewood or charcoal that people in distressed environments rely on. CoffeeBriques not only provide a cheaper source of fuel but protect the environment by reducing or eliminating the deforestation that results from using wood as a primary energy source, in addition to generating small incomes for some at-risk families.

Ideally, plastic materials should be reused or recycled instead of being incinerated or landfilled. However, reuse and recycling infrastructure is not available everywhere. In many locations, recycling centers do not exist locally. PlasticShreds is an initiative where single-use plastic waste (such as mineral water or soda bottles, and plastic containers) are shredded into plastic chips, which are then used as gravel replacement in the building of horizontal structures such as basketball or badminton courts, village roads, pavements or to fill up potholes in roads. A badminton court can "entomb" up to 72,000 discarded empty one-liter water bottles, which is a much better option than discarding these plastic bottles into a landfill or for these bottles to end up in rivers or oceans.