Spreading Comfort, One Sheet at a Time
When you stay at a hotel, guests expect and experience great hospitality. With plush beds, sets of soft towels, and pristine linens, it’s a place of comfort, cleanliness, and abundance. One of the main goals of the hospitality industry is to make sure guests feel cared for, so after your first night, you can likely find your bed made with new sheets and fresh towels in the bathroom. But what happens when the linens are no longer suitable for use in hotel rooms? Linens N Love has the answer.
Linens N Love co-founders May and Vivian Wang grew up very familiar with the hospitality industry, as their father managed a hotel near Disneyland. May recalls, “I remember playing in the breakfast room, building forts using the sheets, pillows, and towels from the hotel. As I grew older, I came to understand that hotels have franchise standards, and the items I was building forts out of were meant to be discarded.” Hotels aim to provide the best service possible, which means they hold the quality of their linens to a high standard. A coffee stain, a small tear, or even a pen mark meant that these linens’ next destination would not be another guest room, but a landfill. Bothered by this, May and Vivian decided to change the fate of these linens by creating Linens N Love, a nonprofit that gives them a chance at another life and purpose through partnerships with shelters around the world.
Turning Discarded Hotel Linens into Hope
The work that Linens N Love does is not only a sustainable solution for hotels, but benefits many of the organizations they connect with throughout the process.
The work that Linens N Love does is not only a sustainable solution for hotels, but benefits many the organizations they connect with throughout the process. Hotels are able to use Linens N Love to improve their sustainability efforts, while the shelters that receive the discarded linens can repurpose them for their needs.
At the Marriott Courtyard in Riverside, Calif., Linens N Love collected 15 boxes of linens, including sheets, blankets, pillowcases, and towels, which were transported to A Sense of Home, an organization dedicated to preventing homelessness by creating first-ever homes and a community for youth aging out of foster care.
Andrea Kitchen, A Sense of Home’s Director of Community Impact, says, “The linens we receive from Linens N Love go to first-ever homes and add an extra touch of personality and care. Something as simple as towels can complete a space and bring so much warmth.”
In addition to working with shelters in their area, hotels around the world are forced to look at their own environmental impact and sustainability practices and work towards a culture of responsible hospitality. Hervé Hourdé, a renowned sustainability consultant for Forbes Travel says, “Linens N Love’s business model is helpful for both the planet and the people. The planet because it’s going to reduce the cotton use and production, people because it is really going to help people in need receive linens wherever they are.”
Linens N Love provides linens to various shelters all over the world including animal shelters, women’s homes, children’s outreach centers, and more. They are continuing to grow internationally and always looking to work with more hotels, charities, corporate sponsors, and volunteers! If you are interested in getting involved in their work, you can learn more at www.linensnlove.org.