Taking a Shower with Sustainability

Posted January 15, 2020

In Blog, Culture of Sustainability, Sustainability, Waste

Buckhead is booming for the hotel industry, consistently outperforming most of the nation. People travel to our area for both leisure and business. Millennials are willing to spend more on travel than any other generation, and in an online survey conducted by Nielsen 85% of millennials reported that “it is ‘extremely’ or ‘very’ important that companies implement programs to improve the environment.” The hotel industry is recognizing its corporate responsibility as well as their customers’ interest in sustainability. In light of this realization, hotels are beginning to phase out mini plastic bottles from their bathrooms nationwide.

If you’re anything like my mom, you have a bowl of travel size bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and lotion in a drawer of your at home bathroom from various hotel stays. Or, you have left tens if not hundreds of half empty plastic carcasses behind, to be laid to rest by the hotel cleaning staff. Their small size and large quantity makes these bottles a hard to recycle material, so they usually end up in landfills, if not polluting a natural environment instead. Plastic does not biodegrade for over 450 years, almost twice as long as the entire history of the United States of America! As Mark Hoplamazian, President and CEO of Hyatt said: “Plastic pollution is a global issue, and we hope our efforts will motivate guests, customers and, indeed, ourselves to think more critically about our use of plastic.”

The major hotels that are participating in this initiative to remove plastic toiletry bottles are as follows:

Hyatt has pledged to replace all traditional bottles no later than June of 2021 at all 875+ properties. Their Buckhead properties include: Grand Hyatt Atlanta in Buckhead and Hyatt Place Atlanta/Buckhead.

InterContinental Hotel Group plans to retrofit all 800,000 hotel rooms to accommodate larger, refillable bathroom amenities by 2021. This change is estimated to save 200 million little bottles from the landfills a year! IHG has already removed all plastic straws and stirrers and has pillows and duvets filed with recycled materials. Their Buckhead properties include: InterContinental Buckhead Atlanta, Staybridge Suites Atlanta-Buckhead and the Holiday Inn Express & Suites Atlanta Buckhead.

Marriott estimates that by making the bathroom switch, they will save 500 million bottles or 1.7 million pounds of plastic waste per year. By December of 2020, their 7,000 hotels in 131 countries will have been converted. Their Buckhead properties include: Atlanta Marriott Buckhead Hotel and Conference Center, Courtyard Marriott Atlanta-Buckhead, and JW Marriott Atlanta-Buckhead.

Although these larger chains pledged to make a change on their own, many other hotels will soon have to follow suit. In October of 2019, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill banning hotels from providing travel-size shampoo bottles to their guests. This legislation will apply to hotels with more than 50 rooms by 2023, and less than 50 rooms by 2024. Hotels will be fined for every day they are in violation if they break compliance. New York is looking to implement a similar legislation.

Bans similar to these are essential in changing the narrative around single use plastics. According to the United Nations, around 90.5% of plastic has never been recycled – meaning it is polluting a beach, a whale’s stomach, a birds nest, or (if we are lucky) a landfill somewhere around the world. Single use plastic not only hurts the environment, but the economy too. The World Economic Forum reports “95% of plastic packaging material value is lost to the economy” after its initial use – $80 to 120 billion annually. While hotels and legislators make changes to step away from unnecessary waste, take time to consider how you can do the same by making meaningful changes, or support companies and politicians that do. We’re glad to see that some of our hotels in Buckhead are taking part in the effort to reduce plastic waste!

References:

hotels, Hyatt, IHG, Marriott, plastic, reduce waste, Travel, travel-bottles

Isabelle Musmanno