Hoteliers continually challenge themselves to turn more and more responsive and responsible towards saving the degrading environment. InterContinental Hotels Group recently announced its commitment to stop the use of bulk-size bathroom amenities at its properties to reduce plastic waste. Two Seasons, with its ‘Soap for Hope’ initiative, recycled 1.5 tons of used soap into 200 thousand new bars. Last year, Disney said it was moving towards refillable dispensers in guest room showers of Walt Disney World. Nonetheless, when it comes to environment consciousness, Marriott is not far behind- for good.
Marriott International announced its plan to replace tiny, single-use toiletry bottles of shampoo, conditioner and bath gel in guestroom showers with larger, pump-topped bottles.
In January 2018, the global hotel brand first began replacing single-use toiletry bottles in the guest bathrooms of about 450 select-service hotels with larger toiletry bottles that contain more product. To date, the company has already rolled out larger bottles at about 1,000 properties in North America, and now expects most of its other hotels to make the switch by December 2020.
When fully implemented across the globe, Marriott International’s expanded toiletry program is expected to prevent about 500 million tiny bottles annually from going to landfills; that’s about 1.7 million pounds of plastic, a 30 percent annual reduction from current amenity plastic usage.
President and CEO Arne Sorenson says, “Marriott has wanted to get rid of small bottles for years, There are just too many of them, and they’re difficult to recycle because of the time it takes to clean them out. It took a lot of work to design tamper-resistant large bottles and get suppliers on board. High-end hotels, in particular, needed to have bottles that still felt luxurious. There were a lot of technical features to this that we had to get right.”
Sorenson does foresees some backlash in the future, just like they received when they banned plastic straws. He adds, “Human nature is what it is and we resist change; but people understand that this is so much better.”
