[WWLink]

Those things should just be illegal. I can't even imagine how much energy and plastic/paper/food goes to waste in those damn things.

[mustyoshi]

An entire hotel probably wastes less from the mini fridge specifically than a family of 4 for a year.

[grues-dinner]

It's in the ballpark if you include all energy source for the family.

100 rooms times, say, 50W (5kW) is 43,000kWh. That's over 10 UK families of 4-5 (4100kWh/yr) for electricity, or 2 if you include gas usage. So for Americans, it's probably must closer to parity.

The fridge does dump heat into the room, so it has a small additional penalty for the aircon in hot countries, but a small, but inefficient compared to a heat-pump, heating offset in cold countries.