I did a quick search but didn't find anything on this...

Recently, I've been wondering about this - I assume hotels refill their little shampoo/conditioner/lotion bottles.

What about soaps? It seems a great waste if guests use a whole bar of soap for just 1 shower. Do hotels find a way to reuse them? Melt them, clean it and cut them back into little bars of soap?

Hi Leumas

After 15 years managing Hotels in London and the Middle East, I have never worked for a hotel company that either refills the small bottles of shampoo, shower gel etc or reuses the soap bars. Probably not too environmentally firendly, but in my opinion it would just be too labour intensive to do as you have described. I have worked in hotels that have used dispensers in their bathrooms and these we did refill.

Max

I sure hope they don't! Sounds nasty to me.

I usually take all soaps, lotions, shampoos etc. with me home, very convenient as I hardly ever have to buy such products.

Same here- I have a whole dish full of barely-used hotel soaps that I use to replenish the bath supply. Leftover shampoo is taken to the health club or on other trips- sometimes I use what I've brought instead of whatever is offered in the place I'm staying.

Seems to me that most of those small bottles have some sort of seal that would clearly show it had been opened before you handle it. And there is a terrible liability potential if s property engaged in refilling those bottles and either made a mistake with the contents or some of the contents were tampered with.

We stay primarily at full-service Marriott properties. Until a few years ago it was common for any opened small bottles to be discarded by housekeeping each day and replaced with new ones. Now the opened bottles are left for the guest to continue using, but a fresh unopened bottle is always available when needed. That encourages the guests to use up each bottle - and saves Marriott some money too.

I would venture trying to reuse or reclaim the little bars of soap would cost far more than any value obtained. Refilling the liquid bottles is a no-brainer.

MisterNice

Some higher end hotel provide full sized bottles of bathroom amenities - I presume they re-fill these. I don't tale these with me based on this assumption. In fact - I have so many mini-bottles of amenities I never bother to take them either. I often give a bag full to the good will - I presume they can find a good use for such items.

Sometimes when I see the little black hairs on the soaps, I wonder myself if they are recycled.

And here I always thought this was so I had a new full bottle to take home with me....

Seems to me that ANY measure taken to try and save money on hotel toiletries is an exercise in futility seeing as 75% of all people who stay in hotels steal them... I even know people who spend a great deal of effort to walk around the hotel looking for the house keeping carts in the hallways so they can clean them out..

That's a disgusting idea! We use the little shampoo bottles at the hotel, and one of my biggest pet peeves is the stupid body wash container affixed to the wall with years of grubby handprints on it, so we bring our own soap bar. The latest outrage was a 5-star hotel that inflicted that awful recycled wafer-thin cardboard non-absorbent toilet paper on us - we won't stay there again.

Any hotel that tried to give us used soap would be off our list!

*gets all shifty eyed* why...what kind of person would ever think of doing such a thing!

Just wondering... do other people consider taking the toiletries "stealing?" I thought they were a convenience item placed there for the guest and, seeing as how I personally don't believe they reuse them, I take the half full bottles with me when I go. Or were you just referring to people who take ones they haven't used? The ones in the room, not off the cart. Taking extras off the cart, I would consider to be stealing.

I know a person who is a Marriott Manager and one time I asked her this very question, it was referring to the soap bars (not the shampoo) and I asked what happend to all the 1/2 used bars of soap. She said they had "buckets full of them" in housekeeping. Apparently they get donated somewhere and then melted down to make new bars of soap. She did mention that one hotel she worked at before actually re-used them, the bars were shredded into soap-dust and then used for washing of the towels as laundry detergent. So my belief is they are (or could be) often RECYCLED.

I always take my allotment of "disposable amenities" with me for future trips, especially hair conditioner to take on my overseas trips, since it often isnt provided in euro-hotels, conditioner is like rare-gold in europe. The small bottles are also very convenient for carry on given the new tsa rules.

I for one do not condone raiding the maid-cart. Its an honor thing to me, I dont want them taking my stuff when they have the opportunity to do so, so respectfully I dont take their stuff. If you really need another 3 oz of shampoo, just ask them or call the front desk.

No, they are boiled down to make bellboys....

I always (or at least when baggage space and conditions (or quality of the products) allow bring thm home to send to the local battered women's shelter and a facility where the unwed are housed until delievery of their unwittingly and unwisely acquired and unplanned, unwieldy burdens.