Hyatt becomes latest hotel multinational to pledge elimination of small plastic bottles

Hyatt Hotels Corporation has pledged to remove small plastic bottles worldwide from all 875 of its properties.

The company has committed to introduce large-format bathroom amenities in favour of small plastic bottles of shampoo, shower gel, conditioner and lotion, which it says will be eliminated across all 20 of its brands by June 2021.

The initiative forms one part of three global schemes being introduced by Hyatt.

These include increasing the number of water stations in key public spaces for guests to refill reusable bottles and serving water in carafes at events.

“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,” Hyatt CEO and president Mark Hoplamazian said.

Hyatt’s three global initiatives build on its commitment to reduce disposables and select environmentally preferable options whenever possible, apart from when single-use bottles are needed for water quality reasons.

Welcome to the club

Hyatt joins a growing number of multinational hospitality companies that have committed to cutting waste in big ways.

Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG) in August announced that its entire hotel estate of almost 843,000 guest rooms will switch to bulk-size bathroom amenities, with the transition to be completed during 2021.

Building on its efforts to reduce plastic waste as part of a broader sustainability agenda, the announcement made IHG the first global hotel company to commit all brands to removing bathroom miniatures in favour of bulk-size amenities.

IHG currently has an average of 200 million bathroom miniatures in use across its entire hotel estate every year.

In September, the largest hotel company in the world, Marriott International, announced it would replace tiny, single-use toiletry bottles of shampoo, conditioner and bath gel in guest room showers with larger, pump-topped bottles.

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 landfill.

This equates to around 771.1 tonnes (1.7 million pounds) of plastic saved from becoming waste, a 30 per cent annual reduction from current amenity plastic usage.