Jackie Chan cleans public restrooms to reuse paper towels — and he’s opening a new exhibit in Salt Lake City aimed at saving the planet

Action-film star Jackie Chan has a multimillion-dollar foundation committed to helping save the environment. As part of that mission, he’s behind a new exhibit at The Leonardo museum in Salt Lake City — one filled with artwork created primarily from recycled props from his movies.

“Jackie Chan: Green Hero” opens to the public on Saturday. He’s hoping to influence everyone to help save the planet — a couple of people at a time.

“If I can move these kinds of things to Utah to educate two people, it’s worth it,” Chan said at the museum Thursday. “I just do the best I can.”

But he also does what he can personally. He recycles. He supports environmental causes. And he cleans public restrooms — really.

Frustrated by watching other people use multiple paper towels after using the facilities, “I use the paper discarded by other people to wash the floor,” Chan said. “I clean the whole thing.”

Then he washes up, uses one small paper towel to dry his hands, and uses his feet to smash down the other towels in the garbage can. “Believe it or not, that’s really me,” Chan said. “Sometimes my colleagues [say], ‘What’s Jackie doing in the bathroom? He never comes out.’

“I'm cleaning.”

Chan helped foot the expense to bring the “Green Hero” exhibit to Salt Lake City from China.

“They approached us,” said Marissa Day, exhibits director at The Leonardo, who admits she was a bit taken aback when she got the call from Chan’s staff.

“I'm not going to lie. At first we thought it was a little strange,” she said with a laugh.

Chan was looking for sites in North America to display his exhibit, and he was eager to be in Salt Lake City during the Sundance Film Festival. (The exhibit will be at The Leonardo for three months.)

“It really started to click with us that we were talking to a modern-day Leonardo da Vinci who looks at the world in a completely new way and is trying so hard to improve it,” Day said.

In small ways as well as big ones. On movie sets, he urges recycling and conservation. He recalled telling his young “Karate Kid” co-star, Jaden Smith, to turn off the lights and the heat when he leaves a room.

“And when I go to bathroom [on set], I say, ‘Who’s next?’” Chan said. After eight or 10 stuntmen follow him, “then we flush.”

Really? “It’s not a joke,” Chan said. “I hope everybody cares about the world.”

The “Green Hero” exhibit includes 18 sculptures made from recycled movie-set materials — everything from a Chinese dragon to a horse to robots. There’s an activity area where visitors can make their own art from recyclables. There’s a video message from Chan and a look back at his career. And the exhibit theater is showing “Jackie Chan’s Green Heroes,” a National Geographic Channel documentary that debuted last year.

At The Leonardo on Thursday, Chan took particular delight interacting with children — posing for photos and greeting 50 youngsters from Salt Lake City’s Mountain View Elementary.

“Hi, kids!” he called. “I come all the way from China to bring a present.” (Each of the students got a ruler made from recycled movie film.)

“I hope I can influence the children as much as I can,” Chan said.

The kids were excited to meet him. So were the adults — including Mario Capecchi, winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine who is on the faculty at the University of Utah and is a senior adviser to The Leonardo.

“Everybody knows who Jackie Chan is!” said Capecchi. “I’ve never talked to anybody who doesn’t know who he is.”

Chan, 64, has forged a career as a stuntman, star, director and producer that stretches back to the early 1960s and includes 140 acting credits. (And, yes, he said there will be a fourth “Rush Hour” movie once he gets a script he likes.)

Capecchi put his stamp of approval on the exhibit and Chan’s overall efforts.

“It’s wonderful to have someone of his stature supporting the environmental movement,” Capecchi said. “Global warming is real. It’s caused by man. We have to find a solution for it and not just simply bury our heads in the sand and pretend it doesn’t exist.

“In this state, that’s the biggest message. We first have to accept that it’s a problem and then start doing something about it.”

Another small way Chan tries to help? Using up soap.

“Right now, if you go to my hotel, you see my soap. I’ve been using it for eight months,” he said. After decades of traveling around the world, “I said, ‘What happens when we check out?’ [Wondering] where the soap goes?”

Now Chan takes soap with him from hotel to hotel. And he takes his own slippers, wearing them until they wear out.

“It’s so easy. That small detail,” he said. “You can save a lot of things.”