Guest clothing, assorted luggage and boxes of convention giveaways, from logo water bottles to clip-on tubes of hand sanitizer...it's all common stuff that gets left behind in hotel rooms.
Here's the good news: Most of the items left behind at the Hilton and other San Francisco hotels don’t just sit around languishing in a lost-and-found pile or get tossed in the trash. Many go on to lead second lives if they aren’t claimed. A lot of the items are donated!
54 percent of American travelers say they had left something behind in a hotel room at some point in their lives.
By far, the most common items left behind in hotels are phone and electronics chargers. The Fairmont San Francisco and the Palace in San Francisco also collect hundreds of chargers every month, which are held for a period of time before they are disposed of.
The Fairmont staff says leave your charger at home and go to the concierge and ask for one. But every six weeks, they have an e-waste company that comes and picks those items up.
Clothing like hoodies and coats, business clothes, shoes, rain jackets, dresses and more are commonly left behind in hotel rooms, along with eyewear and jewelry. Other than the underwear, clothes, eyeglasses and other usable articles are usually donated to homeless shelters, women’s shelters, the Salvation Army and other nonprofits. Suitcases and strollers that people buy just for the trip and leave behind are given to programs that help single moms and homeless families.
All those little soaps guests unwrap and use only once or twice? Even those are repurposed.
The Hilton in SF send those to Clean the World, which melts them down, sanitizes them and creates new soap that’s sent to developing countries and to disaster relief, like the areas recently hit by the hurricanes.
Photo: Getty Images