0:02

Back in two thousand nine, Sean

0:05

Seifler asked himself a question

0:07

that has occurred to pretty much everyone

0:09

who's ever stayed at a hotel. At

0:12

the time, Cypher was a bit of a

0:14

road dog. As a tech executive

0:16

in sales, spent around half his week

0:18

traveling across the US, Minneapolis,

0:21

LA, St. Louis, all over.

0:24

This is a guy who racked up a lot

0:26

of nights in hotel rooms.

0:29

And on one of those trips, something

0:31

caught his attention. That little

0:33

bar of soap in the hotel bathroom.

0:40

There's a natural I

0:42

don't want to waste things in

0:45

me. And as I would use a

0:47

bar of soap one time, there

0:49

was always a little lag inside of me that

0:51

I'm leaving it here. So

0:54

in that hotel room in Minneapolis, after

0:56

a couple of cocktails, that lag

0:58

led to asking the

1:00

question. I called the front

1:02

desk and asked what happens

1:04

to the soap when I'm done with it? From

1:08

freakonomics radio network. This is the economics

1:10

of everyday things. I'm Zachary

1:13

Crockett. Today, used

1:15

hotel soaps. You may

1:17

not think twice about those little bars

1:19

they leave out for you on the sink, but

1:21

a lot of thought went into putting them there.

1:23

Hotel amenities have evolved over the

1:25

last one hundred years. Chekaton

1:28

Dev is a professor at Cornell University's

1:30

Nolan School of Hotel Administration. And

1:33

he says that the earliest hotels actually

1:36

didn't give you any soap. In

1:38

fact, they didn't even give you your own bathroom.

1:41

It's an early twentieth century innovation that

1:43

hotel rooms came with a bath attached.

1:45

In fact, Elsworth Statler, the founder

1:48

of the Statler Hotel Chain. Often

1:50

used to use the line, a room and a bath

1:52

4 a dollar and a half.

1:54

So soap became the very first

1:56

amenity in the bathroom. And

1:59

over time, soap became a

2:01

default offering in many

2:02

hotels. The one thing I've learned about

2:04

the hotel business in the forty three years I've

2:06

been a student of the business is there's

2:08

a lot of copycat, you know,

2:11

they're doing it. We better do it.

2:16

These days, hotels stock their bathrooms

2:18

with all kinds of toiletries, mini

2:20

bottles of ocean, shampoos, conditioners,

2:24

Recently, some big chains have

2:26

replaced these single use products with refillable

2:29

dispensers. But

2:31

at most hotels, you'll still find a bar

2:33

of soap next to the sink. And

2:35

there's a reason for that. They are

2:37

extremely popular. In

2:39

two thousand nineteen, dev co authored a

2:42

study of in room amenities and

2:44

found that eighty six percent of hotel

2:46

guests used those packaged soaps. They're

2:49

more utilized than any other hotel

2:51

room amenity, even the TV.

2:54

It's a self fulfilling prophecy in the sense that

2:56

it's used because it's there, it's there because

2:58

it's used and gets expected. It's

3:01

also probably the one item that's most

3:03

inconvenient to carry with you after use.

3:06

So the solution was let's get the little bitty

3:08

bars of soap that we could then leave

3:10

in the hotel bathroom for disposal.

3:12

So what does that look like? Big picture?

3:15

Let's assume they're between five and six million

3:17

hotel rooms around the world and

3:20

they get used at even sixty percent occupancy

3:22

year

3:22

round. You do the math. That's

3:25

hundreds of millions of room nights. That's

3:27

a lot of soap. That's a lot of soap.

3:29

That takes us back to Sean Seifler.

3:32

The guy who made that call to his hotel

3:34

front desk back in two thousand nine,

3:36

he asked what they did with all that

3:38

soap, and they said we throw it away.

3:44

Cypar could not accept that millions

3:46

of bars of soap ended up in landfills

3:48

every day.

3:50

So he took bunch of these half used bars

3:52

with him and he set up a mad scientist's

3:54

lab in his garage with the help of

3:56

some family and friends. We're all sitting

3:59

on upside down pickle buckets with

4:01

potato peelers. We are scraping

4:03

the outside of those bars of soap My

4:06

cousin, Noelle, is taking this soap

4:08

and he's grinding it through a meat grinder. That

4:11

then gets put into the cookers. I've

4:14

done the research to know that I

4:16

can rebatch it and make a brand

4:18

new really good bar of

4:19

soap.

4:20

How do you go about getting your soap in

4:22

those early days? Did you have a big first

4:24

donor to holiday in at the

4:26

Orlando International Airport remember the general

4:28

manager's name. So clearly, it's Peter Favor.

4:31

He said, I've often wondered

4:33

what we could do with this. And if there's

4:35

something you can do with it, give me anything and

4:37

everything you need to collect it and

4:40

we will make sure that happens on our

4:42

end and we'll get it back to you. Access

4:44

to soap and collecting

4:46

soap was not the issue. That was very

4:49

easy. It just became a matter of, you

4:51

know, when we got it, what are we gonna do

4:53

with this recycled soap? Cypher

4:55

found an unexpected answer to that

4:57

question. That's coming

4:59

up. Think about a

5:01

bicycle. It takes balance to

5:03

get where you want to go. Now, think about

5:05

business. Whatever your business or organization,

5:08

you ride the line. Between numbers and

5:10

people. Just like the bike, it takes

5:12

balance. CLA, CPAs,

5:14

consultants, and wealthy by We'll

5:17

get you there. CLA, Clifton Larsen

5:19

Allen, LLP is an independent network member

5:21

of CLA Global. Investing involves risk, including

5:23

risk of loss. Investment advisory services are offered

5:25

through Clifton, Larsen Allen, wealth advisors, LLC,

5:28

and SEC registered investment adviser.

5:30

This podcast is supported

5:32

by Sondermane. Hey, your mental health

5:34

is important, just as important as your physical

5:36

health. If you need help, Sondermont can connect

5:39

you with a therapist who takes your insurance. And

5:41

is available now. Visit sonder mind

5:43

dot com to meet with a therapist. Therapy

5:45

works.

5:48

As Sean Cypler was researching how

5:50

to get the most out of his pile of used hotel

5:52

soaps, he found himself going

5:54

down a rabbit hole of scientific

5:56

papers. At the time,

5:59

those studies showed that around six

6:01

thousand children under the age

6:03

of five were dying every

6:05

day. From pneumonia and diarrheal

6:07

disease. Every one of the

6:09

studies showed that if you just gave them soap

6:12

and taught them how and when to wash their

6:14

hands, you could cut those deaths in half.

6:16

Getting soaked to all those kids would

6:19

require a slightly bigger operation,

6:22

and that meant funding.

6:24

Cypers spent twenty thousand dollars on

6:26

grant writers and lawyers and sent

6:28

out an application to the Bill and Melinda

6:30

Gates

6:30

Foundation. His proposal was

6:33

rejected. That was a devastating,

6:35

very emotional moment of

6:38

what are we doing Have I made

6:40

a mistake in life? Cypher

6:44

decided to forge ahead anyway. He

6:47

found it clean the world. A

6:49

nonprofit that provides soap and hygiene

6:51

products to communities in need

6:53

around the

6:54

globe. Today, it's quite

6:56

an enterprise. Typically, a room

6:58

attendant will clean anywhere from eleven

7:00

to thirteen rooms a day. That bag

7:02

of soap is filling up. When they get to the

7:04

end of their shift, there will be a clean the world

7:06

green bin for soap. Our system

7:08

will route that box into one of

7:10

our centers. So how does an old

7:12

bar soap become a new bar soap? The first

7:15

thing we do is we put it into a big

7:17

machine that's got a big metal screw

7:19

in it, just grinding that soap

7:21

all the way through the very end almost

7:24

like a meat grinder. There's a very,

7:26

very fine filter. That

7:28

filter catches all the surface material.

7:30

So any plastic hair, paper,

7:33

dirt, that metal screw is

7:36

just pushing, you know, tens of thousands

7:38

of pounds of pressure, and that's really doing

7:40

the initial surface cleaning.

7:42

Those filters have to be changed about

7:44

every forty five minutes. So it's almost

7:46

like NASCAR. Every forty five minutes, we go

7:48

in there with the big and

7:51

we open

7:52

it, we take one filter out, we put a new clean

7:54

one in. As a part of that process,

7:56

they're blending together shreds from a variety

7:59

of soaps, that hotel chains send

8:01

them. Different types, different

8:03

moisture levels, different fragrances, looks

8:05

like spaghetti noodles. When you take it

8:07

over to a mixer, and this is where

8:10

the most important team member

8:12

we have comes into play. That would

8:14

be the soap whisperer. Our

8:16

soap whisperer here in Orlando is

8:18

Carlos Anderson. The affectionately nickname

8:21

is Los d. He has to

8:23

determine how much water

8:25

has to get put in so that it doesn't

8:27

fall apart, so it doesn't crumble, so it's not too

8:29

hard, so it's not any of the things that we don't want.

8:32

We're also adding some sterilization solution.

8:35

What comes out the end is very

8:37

marble, you know, tie dye

8:39

looking bars of soap that have

8:41

all these mixes, which actually

8:44

makes a very cool, very

8:46

unique bar of soap. So that when

8:48

we handed a bar soap to somebody, there was some

8:51

dignity, there was love. That

8:53

palate is going to

8:55

the Dominican Republic, it may be going to

8:57

Nairobi. It may be going into Uganda.

8:59

It could go to the Philippines. It could go into

9:01

Ukraine to help those that are being impacted

9:04

right now.

9:08

It's a noble pursuit, but none

9:10

of this processing or shipping is free.

9:13

Early on, Cycler realized he

9:15

was going to need a funding plan.

9:17

There was no business

9:18

model, and really myself and another

9:21

close friend who was a part of this, we were really

9:23

going through a lot of money at this time, not

9:25

seeing a financial result. How

9:27

did you end up working around that issue?

9:30

There's value here to the hotels.

9:33

This is a premium service for them.

9:35

We're reducing landfill waste. We

9:37

are sending soap back to countries

9:39

and places where so many

9:42

of the room attendants are actually

9:44

from and are themselves sending money back

9:46

to. In the state of Florida at that time, one

9:48

third of the room attendants were estimated to be from

9:50

Haiti, and we were getting ready to send a bunch of

9:52

soap back to Haiti. There's

9:54

a PR value

9:55

here. So what's going on side of me is

9:58

gotta get hotels to pay for this.

10:00

And they did. It's

10:02

over a decade later and the average

10:04

US hotel partner now pays

10:06

clean the world fifty to eighty

10:08

cents per room per month. About

10:11

quarter of that is what the hotels were previously

10:13

paying to waste management companies just

10:16

to get rid of the

10:16

soap. And that's without

10:19

the global benefits and the good PR.

10:21

We recycle one point four

10:23

million hotel rooms on a daily basis.

10:26

In thirteen years, we have diverted twenty

10:29

two million pounds of waste, and

10:31

we have distributed seventy

10:33

five million donated bar soap

10:36

to children families across the globe.

10:43

It's a warm, fuzzy story for sure.

10:46

Just remember though, clean the world

10:48

can't save all the soaps. In

10:50

fact, they'd have to multiply their operation

10:53

by a factor of about a hundred in order

10:55

to do it. Cornell's Checatan

10:57

dev thinks a lot about this

10:59

world of waste that we've created.

11:03

While I applaud clean the world,

11:05

I would like to see more efforts

11:07

made at the root of the problem, to give people

11:09

an incentive, to bring

11:12

yourself with you. Until

11:15

then, every year, around

11:17

three quarters of a billion barely

11:19

used hotel soaps, maybe even

11:22

yours, are headed to a landfill

11:24

to join their friends. For

11:26

the economics of everyday things, I'm

11:29

Zachary Crockett.

11:35

So, Zachary, thank you for making these

11:37

episodes I love them. And based on what

11:39

we've heard from listeners so

11:40

far, they did too. Were they as fun to

11:42

make as they are to listen to? Yeah. This has

11:44

been insanely fun The point

11:46

that I just wanna make in this show is that

11:49

interesting information can come from anyone.

11:51

So I

11:52

have to say, I'm a little jealous because

11:54

you get to speak with people who actually do

11:56

things and make things and figure things out. And

11:58

I'm just talking mostly to academics, and

12:00

they're great. Their brains are gigantic, but

12:03

They're also, you know, on the nerd

12:05

scale, they're like eleven out of

12:07

ten. And I'm just curious how

12:10

you got so interested in this

12:12

journalism. When I was

12:14

a kid, I never wanted one job. My

12:16

dream was to work a thousand different jobs.

12:19

And then I eventually found out that

12:21

I could be a writer and interview all different

12:23

kinds of people. And it was like having a

12:25

different job every couple days. You get super

12:27

obsessed with, like, Dog Walkers for a

12:29

week. You understand who they

12:31

are and why they do what they do, and then you move

12:33

on to vending machine operators and

12:35

start over

12:36

again. Can you talk about your methodology

12:38

of reporting? How do you go deep

12:40

into these worlds and find out enough

12:42

to do a good piece?

12:44

I've found that oftentimes the

12:46

questions that you ask are less important than

12:48

who you talk to. People

12:50

often turn to experts in our world, whether they're

12:52

economists, PHDs, analysts. But

12:55

if I wanna know why there's a bus driver

12:57

shortage, I'm gonna go talk to a bunch of

12:59

bus drivers. And then I'll learn

13:01

something that I never suspected. Like,

13:04

maybe that a part of the reason is

13:06

Amazon is poaching them all to be delivery

13:08

drivers. And then in the process,

13:11

I'll learn that the shortage of bus

13:13

drivers might be worse in areas where Amazon

13:15

has opened new warehouses. That's a fascinating

13:17

connection I may not have learned from someone

13:19

who's only looking at the problem

13:22

through a broader economic lens. But

13:24

whether it's bus driver shortage or

13:26

girl scout cookies or whatever, literally how

13:28

do you find the people who can tell you what you need to

13:30

know?

13:31

One thing is I'm a member of two

13:33

hundred private Facebook groups. Mhmm.

13:35

I'm in communities for rare

13:38

aquarium fish owners, hot wheels collectors,

13:41

lumber mill workers, rideshare drivers,

13:44

and I'll just log in and see the

13:46

strangest updates. I'll see an marijuana

13:48

fish owner talking about how

13:50

the golden sheen on his fish is fading

13:53

away. And then in the comments, there's

13:55

a whole intense debate over

13:57

whether he got taken for a ride by a black

14:00

market fish dealer. I'll see posts

14:02

for McDonald's franchise owners breaking

14:04

down their business model on a screw getting

14:06

detail down to their

14:09

monthly loss in ground beef.

14:12

I'll see posts from ice cream truck drivers

14:14

asking their colleagues how

14:17

to deal with people stepping on their turf

14:19

in local communities. I just want

14:21

to find the extraordinary and the ordinary. You

14:24

can read all these headlines about gas

14:26

prices going up and

14:28

you can read about the supply chains of

14:30

gas and international relations

14:33

and all the macro elements that go into

14:35

the prices you pay at the pump. But

14:38

the people at the end of the supply chain

14:40

often get left out of the conversation. Gas

14:42

station owners don't generally find their way

14:45

into high profile interviews and niche publications.

14:48

And they have lot of interesting things to say.

14:50

In some cases, they have more insight

14:52

than the experts

14:54

do. Now, when you join these

14:56

private Facebook groups, you are not, as

14:58

far as I know, a girl scout or

15:00

a rare fish collector. How does that work?

15:02

How do you lurk and

15:04

even interact ultimately

15:06

without invading privacy. I

15:09

usually message the moderator and I

15:11

say that I'm just someone who's curious

15:14

and I state my case and

15:16

sometimes they let me

15:17

in, sometimes they don't. And

15:19

if they don't, you try to work your way in a different

15:21

method. Well, the good thing about these

15:23

groups is that there are hundreds of them.

15:25

If I wanna infiltrate a traffic

15:28

light engineer, group. There's

15:30

twenty different groups that I can attempt to

15:32

join.

15:37

Zachary, I'm so happy that you've

15:39

decided to come play in our sandbox. So

15:42

thanks. Thank you, Steven.

15:45

So podcast listeners that was

15:47

the last episode of The Economics

15:49

of Everyday Things. For now, we very

15:52

much hope the show will be back in the

15:54

near future To make sure you hear

15:56

it, subscribe to the economics

15:58

of everyday things in your podcast

16:01

app. So far, Zachary has

16:03

looked at the economic of gas stations,

16:06

girl scout cookies, used hotel soaps,

16:08

and mycorona. As

16:10

you can imagine, the list of future topics,

16:12

stretches pretty much to infinity.

16:15

What everyday things would you

16:17

like to hear about? Let us know

16:19

at radiofreakonomics dot com.

16:22

In the meantime, we've got a lot of

16:24

exciting stuff coming up right here on

16:26

freaking on with

16:27

Radio. As always, thanks

16:29

for listening. This step episode

16:31

was produced by Sarah Lilly and

16:33

mixed by Jeremy Johnston. With

16:36

help from Greg Ripon and Ematorel.

16:38

Our executive team is Neil Carooff, Gabriel

16:41

Roth, and Steven Dubner. You're

16:45

sitting around with some friends

16:48

in a garage kicking soap.

16:50

What did that look

16:50

like? First time that the police drove

16:53

by the garage, I remember one of my family

16:54

members going Shawn, I think you're need to talk them about

16:57

this one. The

17:02

Freakonomics Radio Network, the

17:04

hidden side of everything, Stitcher.

17:15

This podcast is supported by Sondermane.

17:17

Hey, your mental health is important, just

17:19

as important as your physical health. If you need

17:21

help, Sondermont can connect you with a therapist

17:24

who takes your insurance and is available now.

17:26

Visit sonder mind dot com to meet with a therapist.

17:29

Therapy works.