What happens to unused soap in hotel rooms?

You stay in a hotel for one night and use the soap. Just a little soap, but enough that you know they're not going to leave it out for the next guest. What happens to all that infinitesimally used soap? Is it turned back into new bars? Do the cleaning staff take it home? (But how much could they really use?) Is it donated to the homeless? I've always wondered - does anyone actually know for sure?

Most hotels just throw them away, which is a horrible waste. However, I have read that:

Hotels in Los Angeles and Orange County, California add a new twist to the recycling gamut: bars of soap from the guestrooms. While soap does not account for tons of diversion or measure up to huge savings, it does make a lot of sense when one considers that most hotel soap bars are barely used and then discarded. Bi-O-Labs in Los Angeles collects discarded soap bars from over 150 hotels and processes them into other products such as laundry soap and surface cleaners.

Most hotels do just throw away the unused soaps.

However, there's a company that takes unused soaps, and through some unique process, creates a "tough" soap (used by painters, etc.).

In Los Angeles, CA most guest just take them with them to use them when needed otherwise, I believe the cleaning person just throw them away and when clicking on the link for article note it date back 1998 that was a long time ago from now.

They throw it away..nobody wants to use a bar of soap after someone they dont know has used it...people could have various skin diseases or infections and things of the sort that noone else wishes to catch..along with ..again..they don't know who has used it

They take all those little bars of used soaps and make soap sculptures.

Seriously, they throw them out. No one wants them.

They are discarded. That's why the bars of soap in hotel rooms are very small.

What Dartswinger said. When I worked cleaning motel rooms, I discarded the soaps.

i'm pretty sure they just throw that stuff away :)