Marriott Hotels Ditching Single-Use Toiletry Bottles by 2020

Marriott International, the world’s largest hotel chain, announced Wednesday that it will no longer use single-use toiletry bottles as part of plans to reduce its environmental impact. The aim is to eliminate small plastic bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and shower gel from Marriott hotel rooms worldwide by December 2020.

Marriott president and CEO Arne Sorenson said, “Our guests are looking to us to make changes that will create a meaningful difference for the environment while not sacrificing the quality service and experience they expect from our hotels.”

The move is an expansion of a policy that was first adopted in January 2018 in Marriott‘s more affordable, economy branches. And in July 2018, the chain rolled out a plan to remove plastic straws and stirrers from its hotels.

The company estimates that in switching to larger pump-action bottles that contain about 10-12 times the amount of toiletry products, they will be able to prevent about 500 million tiny bottles from going to landfills, which is a 30% annual reduction from current amenity plastic usage. However, the hotel’s decision is not moving to refillable wall-mounted dispensers, and the new, larger bottles will be removed by the hotel’s cleaning staff when they run low, and sent for recycling.

Unfortunately, in reality, many municipalities in the U.S currently send most of their recyclable plastic waste to landfills or incinerators. Marriott president and CEO expressed that “there are just too many of them, and they’re difficult to recycle because of the time it takes to clean them out.”

“Plastic pollution is an urgent global crisis and the time is now to think ‘reusable’ instead of ‘disposable,’” said Plastic Pollution Coalition.