We answered a variation of these questions a couple years ago (QoD 12/27/15) and not much has changed, but we thought we’d tackle it again, since we receive reasonable facsimiles from time to time.
We’ll take the questions from last to first.
Hotels lose no money on providing toiletries to guests; they build the costs of toiletries (and laundry) into the room rates. That’s one reason they don’t mind when guests take the toiletries, whether they’re used or not, when they leave. It’s perfectly acceptable to abscond with them -- you’ve already paid for them. You’ve also paid for other consumables, such as tea, coffee, and sugar packets.
Of course, you haven’t paid for towels, robes, hair-dryers, glassware, or Bibles. Anything taken that can be used by the next guests is considered theft.
Boxes of tissues and rolls of toilet paper are gray areas; both can be used by the next guest even if they’re "opened." Maybe we’ll run a poll on this.
Another reason most hotels don’t mind used toiletries disappearing is that they’re often branded. So when you reuse them, you’re reminded of where they came from and where you stayed.
A third reason. We’re not sure about health regulations that mandate furnishing fresh unopened toiletries to guests; we’ve occupied rooms in plenty of dives around the world, including this country, that barely furnish sheets and pillows, let alone toiletries of any kind.
However, we can say with confidence that hotels and motels are highly unlikely to allow the reuse of soap or toiletries by subsequent guests due to the potential spread of illnesses, especially highly contagious ones (hepatitis, herpes, ringworm, meningitis, among many others). It seems impossible for hospitality businesses to indemnify themselves against litigation in cases where illness is spread due to the reuse of toiletries.
You’ve probably noticed that some hotels and motels use liquid-soap, shampoo, and body-wash dispensers. According to hotel studies, the dispensers have been mostly unpopular with visitors, who find them unsanitary (even if only vaguely). Others, however, prefer them, as they eliminate a lot of waste of both packaging and product.
In some cases, according to the American Hotel and Lodging Association, the size of hotel bar soap is shrinking. AH&LA studies have found that an average of just 10% of the soap actually gets used. As a result, some manufacturers are making smaller bars — by adding holes in the center, for one example.
As for what happens to the used toiletries that aren’t taken by guests, it’s been estimated that between one million and 1.5 million bars of soap are discarded from hotel rooms every day in the U.S., going directly to landfills. (We think it's probably more.)
To address this issue, many hotels, including several dozen in Las Vegas, participate in Clean the World and the Global Soap Project, two non-profits that recycle and distribute leftover soap and other used toiletries to homeless shelters and communities in need around the world.
Since its founding in 2009, Clean the World has reportedly recycled more than 11 million bars of soap and hundreds of thousands of pounds of shampoo and conditioner, eliminating more than 750 tons of waste in the process. CTW sanitizes the toiletries before reusing them. The Global Soap Project recycles the soap into new sterile bars before redistributing them.
For our 2015 answer, we learned that the Venetian alone collected and donated almost a half-million bars of soap. Caesars Palace collected more than 25,000 "bottled amenities" (shampoo, conditioner, lotion, etc.) and was responsible for redistributing nearly 250,000 bars of soap. All these numbers have no doubt risen substantially since then.
