CHICAGO _ Tiny shampoo bottles are getting ready to disappear from another hotel bathroom.
Hyatt Hotels Corp. on Tuesday became the latest hotel chain to ditch small bottles of shower gel, shampoo and conditioner in an effort to cut waste. The Chicago-based company plans to switch from the miniature bottles to larger containers at all of its 896 hotels _ comprising 219,308 rooms _ by June 2021 at the latest.
Marriott International and IHG, which owns Holiday Inn, announced similar moves earlier this year, and Walt Disney Co. also has said it plans to replace small plastic shampoo bottles at its resorts and on its cruise ships.
Hyatt said it's also targeting single-use plastic water bottles. The company plans to add water stations where guests can refill bottles in hotels' public spaces. At meetings and events, water will be served in carafes unless bottled water is requested.
"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 President and CEO Mark Hoplamazian said in a news release.
When Marriott International announced plans to expand its switch from mini toiletry bottles to larger, pump-topped bottles in August, it estimated the switch would keep 500 million tiny bottles a year out of landfills. That adds up to about 1.7 million pounds of plastic, Marriott said.
At the time, about 1,000 North American hotels had begun using the larger bottles, with the rest expected to start by December 2020. IHG, which said it used about 200 million mini bottles a year, said it expected the two-thirds of its hotels that had not yet begun using bulk-size bottles to make the switch by 2021.
