Where do the used soaps and shampoos go from hotels?

If you are a traveller and you have been to hotels, motels, resorts and guest houses in Bangladesh, you are most certainly familiar with the 25gm bars of Meril, Lux or Keya soap, the white and black sachets of Revive or Sunsilk shampoo, and the small green packets of Close-up toothpaste usually kept in the bathrooms.  

While the shampoo sachets are quickly used up, most of the time, the soap bars remain half-used. After guests check out of their hotel rooms, the staff discards these soap bars and sachets, which eventually end up in dumping stations. 

Hotel Sea Cox stands near Sugandha Beach in Cox's Bazar. It has 91 rooms. "Every day we need 100 pieces of Meril soap, 260 to 270 pieces of Revive shampoo and 80 to 90 pieces of Close-up toothpaste," said Ataullah, one of the management officials of the hotel. 

Bashir Ashraf (not his real name), a former employee of the Ocean Paradise hotel at the Cox's Bazar said, "Big hotels have contracts with companies like Square or Unilever for customised liquid shower gels and shampoos. They use gel dispensers in their washrooms. And these hotels also provide customised tubes of toiletries that sometimes the guests take with them."   

The trade marketing department of Square Toiletries informed us that they have contracts with 120 hotels and guest houses in Cox's Bazar. 

The company sends one lakh pieces of 25gm soap bars, 2.5 lakh pieces of shampoo sachets and 600 litres of handwash to these hotels. But they couldn't tell us how many litres of shower gel they sell. 

These hotels generally do not send back or recycle the single-used or remaining soaps. That's 2.5 lakh plastic sachets and if we consider even half of the used soap bars left behind by tourists, that's 50,000 bars a month left in just one tourist spot in the country.   

So, what happens to the remaining soap bars and the shampoo sachets? "We throw them in the garbage bin and the municipality collects those to dump," Ataullah replied. 

Bashir agreed, saying, "We, as employees, do not use the soap as well, they are dumped."    

Where do these half-used soap and shampoo go?

Cox's Bazar has four dumping grounds near the Bakkhali River, where the city's solid trash is dumped. According to the information given by Cox's Bazar City Corporation, the city produces 88 tonnes of solid waste a month. That includes the hotel and motel area's waste as well.

And as for the liquid waste, according to the Cox's Bazar Development Authority, the municipality has no central Sewage Treatment Plant (STP). 

An STP (or wastewater treatment plant or a water pollution control plant) can remove the majority of pollutants from sewage/wastewater before it is released into the environment or reused. 

Wastewater from hotels goes through a few treatment steps to remove the majority of solid and organic contaminants, before it is clean enough to be properly discharged into waterways. The treated water can either be reused for gardening or discarded after treatment.

According to the information provided on the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism of Bangladesh website, there are 550 hotels and restaurants in 45 districts in the country, all of which are registered. Among them, there are 18 five-star hotels, six four-star hotels and 22 three-star hotels. 

Cox's Bazar has five 5-star hotels, one 4-star hotel and four 3-star ones. In total, it has 30 registered hotels and restaurants. 

"But in reality, this popular tourist destination has more than 300 hotels, out of which only a few have their own STP," said Tayfur Rahman, assistant town planner of the Cox's Bazar Development Authority. 

Bangladesh Parjatan Corporation has 32 motels all over the country. And according to Khabir Uddin Ahmed, president of the Tourism Resort Industries Association of Bangladesh (TRIAB), there are more than 200 resorts in Bangladesh with more than 6,000 rooms. Although only 76 to 80 resorts are registered under the Ministry.

Half-used soap bars and shower gel from these hotels do not go back to the companies. Even there is no data on how many hotels have STPs.  

When Khabir Uddin was asked whether the resorts, built on 10 to 100 bighas of land, have STPs or not, he said, "No, they don't. The resort's sewerage is processed underground." 

"Three, four and five-star hotels and resorts have to be registered under the civil aviation and tourism ministry. One-star and two-star hotels and resorts have to be registered under the District Commissioner," said Mahbubul Islam, a former inspector of the Department of Environment in Cox's Bazar. 

But to be registered, the hotels need to fulfil a couple of requirements by the Department of Environment, one of which is having an STP.     

According to the Department of Environment, only six of the 300 hotels and motels located in Cox's Bazar's specified zone have environmental clearance and STP. Hotel Seagull, Ocean Paradise, Long Beach, Simon Beach Resort, Cox Today, Sea World and Sea Pearl have environmental and STP clearances. 

We could not independently verify if these six hotels effectively follow through with the STP guidelines. 

Cox's Bazar Hotel-Motel-Guest House Owners Association's General Secretary Abul Kashem Sikder refused to answer why most hotels and guest houses in Cox's Bazar lack their own STPs.  

Chances are that all these soap bars are taken to the dumping stations near the Bakkhali River and they eventually end up in landfills, or they are simply washed out to the ocean by rainwater. 

How is this harming the environment?

Dr Pradip Kumar Bakshi, Professor of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Dhaka, said, "Soap is a basic component, meaning if it gets into the animal stomach, it can reduce the level of acidity, impending the digestion process. Also, the long-chain hydrocarbon in soaps makes them less biodegradable, causing them to remain in the environment for more time." 

Therefore, when a large quantity of soap and similar chemicals are thrown into the water, it harms the aquatic animals. 

According to the Department of Ecology of the State of Washington, phosphates in detergents can lead to freshwater algal blooms. These reduce the available oxygen in the water that fish need. 

Lower dissolved oxygen can also change the chemistry of underwater sediments, releasing toxins that harm aquatic life.

But how much soap concentration do we have in the waters of Cox's Bazar, Saint Martin or Kuakata? "Unfortunately the environment department of the country is not bothered with such questions, hence there are no such data or research papers on this," said Shamsher Ali, member secretary of Nadi Adhikar Manch (NAM).

The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that 1.3 billion tons of waste, between 4% and 8% of global waste, is produced each year solely by tourists around the world.

And how is the world thinking of solving this? 'Clean The World' is an international company based in the United States that cleans soap from up to 1.4 million hotel rooms worldwide. It has donated over 73 million bars of recycled soap to people in countries such as Ghana, the Philippines and Bangladesh, where many live without access to basic services like running water.