CSV Programs, Creating Shared Value
Diversey is committed to making a positive impact to the lives of people in the communities where we live and operate. Employee volunteerism, disaster relief, and product donations are ways we make a difference. We also team up with customers and NGOs to tackle shared social and environmental challenges, working together to “Create Shared Value” (CSV). Our portfolio of CSV programs—including Soap For Hope, Linens For Life, CoffeeBriques and PlasticShreds —touches all three parts of sustainability with social, environmental, and financial benefits.
Goal: Improve the lives of one million people in the communities where we operate
Soap For Hope™
Over 7 million children die each year from diseases that can be prevented with simple hand washing. And every year, a typical 400-room hotel generates 3.5 tons of solid soap waste. That waste either goes to landfill, or is shipped to a global recycling facility, costing hotels hefty fees. Soap For Hope, teaches at-risk communities to salvage the hotels' soap slivers turning them into new soap bars.
Soap For Hope focuses on 3 core objectives:
- Saving lives - enabling hygiene through providing access to soap to communities who need soap but lack access
- Enhancing livelihood for the local community through recycling and reprocessing soap
- Helping hotels reduce waste by turning used soap into something useful again
Linens For Life™
Linens for Life has a simple but powerful objective: to empower people displaced by disasters with support from Diversey and its hotel customers. With this program, several families in a community are able to earn a small livelihood by converting linens discarded by hotels into new and useful items that they can sell. At the same time, hotels can recycle their unwanted linens in a way that makes a real difference, helping people who have lost everything in a natural disaster and who reside in refugee camps.
Communities receive basic training on how to sew and use sewing machines donated by Diversey. A local charity is trained to operate the program. Once trained, they can work at a refugee camp’s communal building to give a new lease on life to the linen donated by the hotels. Items created include pillow cases, tote bags and simple clothing, which are then sold to earn a small income for the people who made them.
CoffeeBriques
The CoffeeBriques programme converts used coffee grounds into eco-friendly fuel for cooking and heating. CoffeeBriques not only provide a cheaper source of fuel, but also enables people to earn livelihoods by converting the used coffee grounds into CoffeeBriques, as well as protects the environment by reducing or eliminating deforestation that results from using wood or charcoal as primary energy source.
PlasticShreds
Plasticshreds programme upcycles single-use plastic wastes and shred them into plastic chips. These chips are then used as a gravel replacement in the mixing of building materials for horizontal structures such as basketball or badminton courts, village roads, pavement, or just to fill up a potholes. A badminton court can “entomb” up to 72,000 discarded empty 1L water bottles, which is a far better option vs discarding the plastic waste into a landfill or having these bottles to end up in our rivers or oceans.