A chute is a facility in a building that allows the rapid transit of items from one location inside a building to another. They are powered by gravity--for example, an elevator is not a chute.
For example, laundry chutes in hotels are placed on different floors to allow the expedient transfer of dirty laundry to be transported to the hotel's laundry without having to use methods such as goods lifts.
Garbage chutes are used for a similar purpose, but also allow all the building's garbage to end up in the one place, since the chutes will ultimately link to the one bin or dumpster outside.
Another type of chute which is no longer in common use is the timber slide.
Laundry chutes are common in fiction, as means for the protagonist to quickly escape.