Hotels produce a lot of waste. It’s not easy to set up a room for a night—then tear it all down in order to prepare for the next guest—without generating a fair bit of trash.
Not only that, but travelers are more likely than locals to need disposable, single-use items. That may be why a European Commission study found that the average amount of waste per guest per night was around 2.2 pounds. For resort hotels, that number was over 13 pounds.
Some hotels have responded to this by finding ways to limit the amount of waste in a hotel room. However, as a recent TikTok video shows, some of these waste-cutting and cost-cutting decisions can leave guests scratching their heads.
What’s Up With This Soap?
In his video, TikTok user Felix Bazgan (@fbazgan) says he’s discovered a new “cheap or money-saving way hotels are cutting back on different things.”
“Check this out. This is the hotel soap here at a Marriott,” he says. In his hands is a small bar of soap. Rather than being one solid block, there are several holes running along the inside of it.
“Instead of having a solid soap, they’ve got three holes … in the soap to take out the mass and the weight of it,” he observes. “Interesting.”
Is This Normal?
While it may not be something many hotel guests think about, “unused hotel soap” has actually been a problem for a pretty long time.
When one opens a hotel soap, it cannot be reused by another guest, meaning that it often just gets thrown away. This is an inefficiency that leads to considerable waste.
Hotels have found various methods for solving this problem. First, some hotels have begun providing liquid soap in mounted containers.
Second, some hotels now stock their rooms with alternative bars of soap, such as the one shown in Bazgan’s video. Online discussions about this choice show neutral to positive responses from travelers, with many noting issues of waste in the hotel industry.
Finally, a number of hotels also partner with companies that take used soap and attempt to do something positive with it. As reported by TIME, the Orlando-based company Clean the World offers hotels a service where, for a low fee, they will collect unused soap. From there, they take the soap, melt it down, and repurpose it into new soap. This soap can then be provided to the Red Cross and other NGOs around the world.
Commenters Like The Soap
In the comments section, users appeared not to care if the hotel was solely attempting to save money. To them, this represents a needed change in the hotel industry.
“Given that nearly all hotel soap is thrown away and isn’t actually ever used, this is brilliant,” said a commenter.
“This also dramatically cuts down on waste,” echoed another. “They throw away so much soap.”
“Think about it from their point of view; Hardly anybody is going to be staying long enough for that to even matter, and the soap gets thrown out no matter what. So if they choose to save some money, it’s not actually going to matter except for the rare occasion,” detailed a third. “Those savings usually go to amenities, like free wifi or the pool being open 24/7, for example.”
@fbazgan Next Hershey will be drilling holes in their chocolate bars
BroBible reached out to Marriott via email and Bazgan via TikTok direct message and comment.