Marriott International, the world’s largest hotel chain, will eliminate single-use toiletries provided at its properties by the end of next year.
Small plastic bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and bath gel in hotel rooms will be replaced with larger pump-topped bottles, the company said Wednesday.
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Marriott said it has already made the switch at more than 1,000 of its properties in North America. It has more than 7,000 properties worldwide.
“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 landfills; that’s about 1.7 million pounds of plastic, a 30 percent annual reduction from current amenity plastic usage,” the hotel chain said.
President and CEO Arne Sorenson said they had wanted to get rid of the small bottles for years, but it took time to design tamper-resistant bottles and get suppliers on board.
“There were a lot of technical features to this that we had to get right,” he said.
The announcement follows another from competitor hotel chain InterContinental Hotels Group, which said in July it was switching to bulk-size bathroom toiletries by the end of 2021.
IHG, which owns Holiday Inn and Kimpton Hotels, said it used an average of 200 million single-use bathroom toiletries per year.
The company also said it would eliminate plastic straws from its hotels by the end of 2019.
