Hilton Kota Kinabalu have teamed up with the Starfish Malaysia Foundation and ECOLAB for the launch of its soap-recycling program, Making a Difference. The eco-friendly program aims to aid and empower marginalised youths in Sabah.

“We are delighted to be launching this program in line with our goals to double the investment on social impact and to reduce our carbon footprint by half in the year 2030, said Linda Pecoraro, General Manager of Hilton Kota Kinabalu.

In support of the local community, more than 30 team members of Hilton Kota Kinabalu handcrafted the soaps step-by-step at the launch of ‘Making a Difference program. The event was graced by Windson Chuah, Distributor Sales Manager, SEA as well as Azymie Yusof, Territory Manager of ECOLAB and Program Coordinators, Terrence and Deborah Ooi from the Starfish Malaysia Foundation. A total of 468 recycled soap bars were made by following the stringent process of sanitizing and cleaning, grinding, melting, moulding and packaging.

Hilton Kota Kinabalu will be continuously contributing to Starfish Malaysia Foundation with approximately 350 recycled soap bars a month. The soaps are to be donated to marginalised youths living in hostels provided by the Starfish Foundation for them to attend schools. The children come from poor families in the rural areas of Sabah, Borneo where local schools are not available.

Every year, a typical 400-room hotel generates 3.5 tons of solid soap waste, and these hotel soap slivers can be salvaged and turned into new soap bars. The program focuses on three core objectives  saving lives by providing access to soap to communities who need soap but have no access; to provide livelihood to the local community through recycling and reprocessing soap to help hotels reduce waste by turning used soap into something useful again.

More than 7 million children die each year from diseases such as pneumonia that can be prevented with simple and proper sanitation. Handwashing with soap is the most effective and cost efficient way, but does not come easily to the underprivileged in Sabah, Borneo. As a leading hospitality company in the world, Hilton intends to do their part by giving back to society and saving the earth.

We rely on the local community for staff so its important to us that we give back as much as we can. We are committed to making the world a better place for our communities.

To date globally, Hilton hotels across 127 countries have successfully participated in their very own Soap for Hope campaigns to recycle all guests used soap bars, and will continue to take place with all other properties around the world in committing to sending zero soap to landfills by the year 2030.

For more information about this program, please call 088 356 000 or email [email protected]