This past week’s Green Supplier Spotlight featured something new from Pineapple Hospitality: paper-based single-use packaging for amenities. The product is one example of an attempt to provide an alternative to single-use plastic amenity bottles. Velas Resorts also made news this past week with its Water Bottle Painting Workshop—an invitation to guests to customize their own reusable water bottles using premium paints, fine brushes, and a protective lacquer spray. Also this past week, The Good Plastic Company, a leading sustainable materials manufacturer, announced new and notable developments across its signature Polygood line. Composed of 100 percent recycled and recyclable plastic, including post-consumer and post-industrial waste such as refrigerators, CD cases, spools, and electronics, Polygood transforms hard-to-recycle plastics into durable, non-porous surfaces that resist abrasion and moisture.
The elimination of plastic “waste” was a main theme this past week with the June 5 World Environment Day focus on eliminating plastic pollution.
It is always great to learn about new efforts by hotel companies and suppliers to eliminate or reduce plastics consumption. The Waste Management section of Green Lodging News is filled with hundreds of examples of beneficial plastics reduction and recycling.
‘Together, We Can Deliver an End to Plastic Pollution’
According to the UN Environment Programme, “For decades, plastic pollution has infiltrated every corner of the world—contaminating the water we drink, the food we eat, and the air we breathe. Microplastics are now even found in our bodies. Change happens through all of us. The choices we make can shape industries, shift markets and redefine our collective future. Together, we can deliver an end to plastic pollution that protects people and the planet.”
“The rewards of fixing plastic pollution are profound: cleaner oceans and lands, healthier people and ecosystems, greater climate resilience, and stronger economies,” the UN Environment Programme adds. “A circular economy for plastics offers a sustainable path forward. This means we need to rethink how we design, make, use and reuse plastics. Products must be designed to be used more than once, and to be recycled at the end of their life. This shift must include all stakeholders across the plastics value chain.”
Examples of Hotel Company Initiatives
What are some of the world’s leading hotel companies doing to reduce plastics waste?
According to Hilton, “Food waste reduction, recycling and the removal of single-use plastics are all important efforts to reach our 2030 Goals and to create a more sustainable hospitality industry.” In its 2023 Travel With Purpose report, Hilton said it has reduced plastic waste production by 100 tons each year through the use of Digital Key. Eighty-two percent of hotels offer it. Seventy percent of Hilton hotels provide guests access to hydration stations or have an on-site bottling plant.
InterContinental Hotels Group, on its website, states, “To support our efforts, our hotels have access to a Single-Use Items Toolkit, which provides a best-practice guide for reducing, reusing, replacing, and recycling single-use items. This globally available toolkit features examples from our brands and insights tailored to properties with diverse waste management infrastructures. Additionally, we have established brand standards focused on reducing plastic waste. In 2019, we became the first global hotel group to commit to replacing bathroom miniatures with full-size amenities, which has been incorporated into brand standards across all hotels worldwide.”
Marriott International, the world’s largest hotel company, in its 2024 Serve 360 Report, said it achieved 95 percent compliance for the transition to large format residential bath amenities for certain brands across managed and franchised hotels globally in 2023, with plans to extend the transition to additional properties in 2024. Marriott implemented a brand standard to remove plastic straws and plastic stirrers from properties and developed guidance on alternatives to single-use water bottles, such as the use of water bottling plants and installation of water bottle refill stations.
Wyndham Hotels & Resorts
In its 2024 ESG Report, Wyndham Hotels & Resorts says, “As of year-end 2023, Wyndham branded hotels in the EMEA region have reached 70 percent adoption of bulk amenity dispensers, while six brands in the U.S . & Canada now require their use as well.” In 2023, Wyndham collected 269,130 pounds of soap and plastic for Clean the World.
Accor, in its Impact Report 2023, said 72 percent of hotels had eliminated 57 single-use plastics items from the guest experience, including water bottles.
In its 2024 Sustainability Report, Choice Hotels International states, “In 2024, we established a cross-functional task force to take an inventory of single-use plastic items across all our brand segments, identifying opportunities to reduce single-use plastics in our hotel portfolio. Our managed hotels no longer use plastic straws, stirrers, styrofoam cups, bowls, plates and to-go containers. Many have also switched to using wood coffee stirrers, glass water jugs for meetings, and more. This also includes several pilots such as boxed and aluminum alternatives to plastic water bottles in the marketplace, compostable to-go food containers, cutlery and bags, and water fountains on room floors. These pilots will help us identify further opportunities to reduce single-use plastics.”
What does your company’s plastics reduction policy include? What are your company’s most successful plastics reduction initiatives and why? I would love to learn more. I can be reached at greenlodgingnews@gmail.com. And be sure to make every day World Environment Day.
Looking for Guest Columnists
Every two weeks Green Lodging News posts a new guest column on its website. (Click here for examples.) The guest column also appears in the weekly e-newsletter. Green Lodging News is currently in need of industry experts to contribute occasional guest columns. Experts may include consultants, architects, designers, suppliers, and those who own or operate green lodging establishments. Columns may be articles that take a stance on a particular subject or be strictly educational in nature. Columnists benefit by having their photo included along with a one paragraph description of their company. Interested in writing a column? Contact Glenn Hasek, publisher and editor, at (813) 510-3868, or by e-mail at greenlodgingnews@gmail.com.
Get in our Green Supplier Spotlights!
Green Lodging News, lodging’s leading environmental news source, publishes the Wednesday Green Supplier Spotlight and Thursday Green Suppliers Spotlight. Green Supplier Spotlight features just one vendor and Green Suppliers Spotlight features multiple vendors. Click here for a Green Supplier Spotlight sample and rate sheet. Click here for a Green Suppliers Spotlight sample and rate sheet. Both e-blasts that reach 19,540 subscribers have been built to generate quick leads. A report is sent a week after each e-blast that includes the number of e-mails sent, number of opens, and number of click-throughs. Contact Glenn Hasek at (813) 510-3868, or by e-mail at greenlodgingnews@gmail.com for more information.
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