Going plastic-free: How hotels are joining the anti-plastic fight

A traveller drinks water from a plastic bottle. Will the hospitality industry be the first to quit plastic entirely? Image: Louis Hansel, Unsplash A single 200-room four-star hotel can use about 300,000 pieces of single-use plastic in a month if it is at full-capacity and does not invest in any eco-friendly alternatives, according to calculations done by an expert for Eco-Business in the wake of several anti-plastic announcements by major hotel chains. The estimate includes 20,000 plastic water bottles, 49,765 plastic amenities and amenity packages, 216,693 pieces of plastic for food and beverage operations, including plastic wrap, storage bags and latex gloves, and 13,375 plastic bags, which does not even include plastic laundry bags used by third-party services to protect laundered clothing for staff and guests, and bags used by food suppliers, said sustainability and plastics expert Marissa Jablonski. The figures underscore the depth of the challenge for the hospitality industry—and the opportunity for change—as it gears up efforts to go plastic-free. In August 2019, the Marriott group announced that it will replace most of its hotels’ single-use shampoo, conditioner and bath gel bottles with larger ones by 2020, preventing about 500 million of the tiny plastic bottles from […]

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