Summary: Starwood Hotels & Resorts Passes Sustainability Milestone with Clean the World – More than 50,000 Hotel Rooms Recycling Soaps and Bottled Amenities

Less than one year after becoming corporate partners, Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE: HOT) has reached a significant sustainability milestone with Clean the World Foundation Inc.

Starwood, one of the world’s leading hotel and leisure companies, has surpassed 50,000 hotel rooms participating in the Clean the World amenities recycling program. The hotel rooms represent nearly 30 percent of the total Starwood properties in North America.

Clean the World and Starwood announced a corporate partnership on Earth Day, 2011. Since joining Clean the World’s hospitality partnership program, Starwood properties have contributed more than 278,000 lbs. of hygiene products – soaps, shampoos, conditioners, body washes, and lotions – which would have been discarded as trash were it not for recycling efforts provided by Clean the World.

Clean the World Foundation Inc. is a 501 (c) (3) charitable organization committed to stopping the spread of preventable diseases by collecting, recycling and distributing hotel guest room amenities to children and families in the United States, Canada, and more than 45 countries. Additionally, Clean the World has helped divert more than 1.4 million lbs. of hotel waste from local landfills through its sustainable and socially responsible efforts.

Through a series of webinars with Starwood properties and a strategic internal marketing and communications campaign, Starwood has steadily added properties to Clean the World’s growing list of more than 1,300 hospitality partners in North America. There are now 150 Starwood properties, representing all brands, enrolled in the Clean the World amenities recycling program, up from 31 individual properties when the corporate agreement was announced last year.

“Our goal in the first year of participation with Clean the World was to achieve 25% adoption among our North American properties, and we have exceeded that goal,” says Jennifer Bauchner, director of rooms and sustainability, Starwood North America Operations. “Once our property managers understand the environmental and social impact of amenities recycling and how that leads to employee engagement and customer interest , they are eager  to support Clean the World.”

Each day 9,000 children around the world die from diseases such as acute respiratory illness and diarrheal diseases that can be prevented by washing with bar soap. Clean the World has a mission to put soap in the hands of people who need it most to improve hygiene and sanitation conditions and to lessen the impact of disease and promote better hygiene and living conditions worldwide.

“Starwood has been a remarkable partner from the start and this milestone is an example of how corporate support can lead to adoption of sustainable and socially responsible initiatives at individual properties,” says Shawn Seipler, co-founder at CEO at Clean the World. “As our first corporate partner, Starwood recognizes the value of our comprehensive amenities recycling program and the social good it can provide with the proper encouragement and investment on the local level.”

Clean the World recently achieved a major milestone with the global distribution of more than 10 million soap bars in just three years of operation. The soaps are often packaged as part of sustainable hygiene kits, which include recycled bottled amenities and other hygiene-related items collected from Clean the World hotel partners throughout North America. Recent distributions of soaps and hygiene kits have been made in East Timor, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Madagascar, Nicaragua, and Sierra Leone.