Everyone should be doing this 
| | Holland America CEO, Stein Kruse
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06 MAR 2009: This just makes sense. Until recently the thousands of mini- bottles of complimentary shampoo and soap that get thrown when passengers leave them behind, all went one place – landfills. But Holland America has a better idea.
The cruise line came up with a new use for the discarded items – they are donating the unused shampoo and soap to the homeless and needy.
"You start doing the math," said Stein Kruse, CEO and president of Holland America Cruises. "You take thousands of people, thousands of these bottles and you multiply over several weeks and months the numbers go into the tens if not the hundreds of thousands."
The items are now collected, separated into bins and brought through Customs at ports of call, a process far more labour intensive and time-consuming than just throwing them out – and the cruise line doesn`t make any profit for the extra work.
The programme, called Ship to Shelter, started last year in Seattle, where Holland America is based. In January it expanded to Port Everglades, Fort Lauderdale.
Marti Forman is CEO of the Cooperative Feeding Program in Florida, is a happy recipient. The group feeds about 400 people a day and provides hot meals and showers for homeless men and women. Like many other charitable organizations in tough economic times, the Cooperative Feeding Program has seen donations drop dramatically.
"The cash donations aren't there” said Forman.
"If we have to decide between people having shampoo [or] people having something to eat, we're going to opt to have the food for them."
With the cruise line's donations, now the programme will no longer have to make that choice.
And since the programme started, there has been an increase in the number of people coming to the shelter to use the showers.
For Kruse, the programme speaks to a human need.
"How important it is for a person who is homeless to have clean hair," Kruse says, "to have shampoo that they can get for free and clean themselves."
The programme's impact has spurred Holland America to begin donating other items, Kruse said. The line has decided to give away TVs, uniforms, plates, silverware, and pots and pans, too.
Kruse said he hopes other companies that are throwing away used but reusable items will follow suit and donate goods they discard every day.
Sheldon James, the crew purser aboard the Noordam, that docks at Port Everglades, prepares the paperwork to get bins of shampoo bottles, soaps and even office supplies through Customs.
It is added work for him and the crew, but they have all pitched in.
"This is primarily stuff that is left over by our guests," James said, but crew members who heard of the programme also are "donating clothing, books and other stuff that [the homeless] need."
Taking advantage of the shower at the Cooperative Feeding Programme, homeless John Nilson said the shower is the best part of his day.
"You come out of here and for a second you can actually feel like it's not so bad for that one brief moment."
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