Hilton Worldwide celebrates sustainability with ‘Soap for Hope’ Initiative

In celebration of Hilton Worldwide’s annual Global Month of Service, more than 100 volunteers from Hilton Worldwide’s offices and hotels in Dubai participated in an event focused on Soap for Hope, a soap recycling initiative developed by Diversey, a provider of cleaning and hygiene products to the institutional marketplace. Diversey is a brand of Sealed Air Corporation under its Diversey Care Division.

As part of the company’s commitment to repurposing used goods for community needs, more than 100 Hilton Worldwide Team Members from across the company’s sevenhotels in Dubai today joined children from Al Garhoud National Charity School to receive training on soap recycling, producing a remarkable 200 bars of soap. Today’s event contributes to ongoing efforts led by Hilton Worldwide’s UAE hotels, which have partnered with Diversey to create more than 27,500 new bars of soapsince June 2014.

Speaking from the Global Month of Service event in Dubai, Rudi Jagersbacher, President, Hilton Worldwide Middle East & Africa, remarked: “Global Month of Service is a great opportunity for us to join together to make a real difference in our local communities and this year, we are celebrating our regional success across MEA, where we have helped produce more than 400,000 bars of recycled soap!

“To see our Team Members and local community members actively take part in this challenge is inspiring, as we seek to empower visitors to Travel with Purpose – by living sustainably and strengthening local communities around the world,” concluded Jagersbacher.

Since 2011, more than 700 Hilton Worldwide properties globally have processed more than one million bars of soap through the company’s global partnership with Diversey and Clean the World, and initiatives such as Soap for Hope.

“Soap for Hope demonstrates the massive potential that simple recycling can have in creating shared value for society, with Hilton Worldwide showcasing the importance it places on contributing to communities by encouraging teams around the world to embrace Soap for Hope. It is a pleasure to join this year’s Global Month of Service activity in Dubai to see this commitment come to life,”commented Varun Asser & Rosario Fernandes of Diversey, who manage the sustainability arm of the organization in the UAE.

Global Month of Service is Hilton Worldwide’s largest annual community service initiative and mobilizes hundreds of thousands of Team Members from every region to engage in numerous volunteer events and activities happening around the world. Volunteers offer their time to support a wide range of projects including conserving natural resources, mentoring and training young people, creating amenity care packages for communities in need, collecting surplus food and distributing to underserved communities and aiding local communities devastated by disaster.

Since its inaugural service celebration in 2012, Hilton volunteers have provided support to more than 6,700 projects worldwide contributing more than 300,000 hours of community service. Last year in just one week, Hilton hosted more than 3,500 projects in 86 countries, volunteering more than 150,000 hours. The company aims to complete 3,750 projects across its global footprint. 

Team Members are encouraged to share their personal stories of hospitality and community service. Throughout the month, photos, videos and stories will be posted at www.hiltonworldwide.com/serve, on the Hilton Worldwide Facebook page and on the @HiltonWorldwide Twitter account.