The fight to save the seas from plastic waste may mean the end for mini bottles of shampoo and other toiletries that hotel guests love to stuff into their luggage.
The owner of Holiday Inn and InterContinental Hotels said Tuesday that its nearly 843,000 guest rooms are switching to bulk-size bathroom amenities as part of an effort to cut waste. The transition is due to be completed in 2021.
“Switching to larger-size amenities across more than 5,600 hotels around the world is a big step in the right direction and will allow us to significantly reduce our waste footprint and environmental impact as we make the change,” said InterContinental Hotels Group CEO Keith Barr.
IHG, which uses an average of 200 million bathroom miniatures every year, said customers expect them to act responsibly.
And there is little doubt that public awareness of the problem of plastic waste has been swelling.
Global plastic production increased to 380 million metric tons (418 million tons) in 2015 from 2 million metric tons in 1950, according to research by Roland Geyer, a professor of industrial ecology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, together with Jenna Jambeck of the University of Georgia and Kara Lavender Law of the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.
About 60% of the 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic produced throughout history has ended up as waste, with more than three-fourths of that going into landfills or the environment, the authors estimated in a 2017 article. In 2010 alone, between 4 million and 12 million metric tons of plastic entered the marine environment.
Shocking images keep hammering the point home. Notable campaigns included one by Britain’s Sky News, which showed whales bloated by plastic bags when the creatures were cut open after dying. Further trash horrors were underscored by TV naturalist David Attenborough, whose documentary “Blue Planet II” delivered heartbreaking shots of sea turtles shrouded in plastic.
And where consumers’ attention goes, so does that of companies.
Amcor, L’Oréal, Mars, PepsiCo, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Walmart and Werner & Mertz are among the companies who have committed to move, where relevant, from single-use to reusable packaging by 2025. according to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, an innovation think-tank.
(AP)
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5 Responses
Will save them tons of $$
There is no plastic problem and the seas are in no danger. The whole thing is one big hoax. The so-called “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” is completely invisible to the naked eye. Anyone telling you it consists of plastic bags and straws covering square miles of ocean is lying to you. It consists of microparticles that are both invisible and harmless. Yes, fish and turtles swallow them; no, there is no evidence that they suffer any kind of harm. The whole thing is a bobbe-mayseh designed to scare people and to change their behavior because it offends the Green Avoda Zara.
Dear Millhouse: you are absolutely incorrect on all statements. There are giant islands of trash, and it includes way more than bags and straws. No one disputes this. And yes, plastic breaks down into micro-particles; the levels of digested plastic have absolutely been shown to reduce fish and other animal’s reproduction rates. And even if you would think of arguing for some reason that we aren’t supposed to care for animals, then think about how much less fish there would be to feed humans. And just think what this plastic does inside your own body: plastic comes from oil. Why wouldn’t you think years of plastic accumulation in your body cause health effects and diseases? If you step away from your political affiliations for a second, what’s wrong with doing away with finding ways of making less garbage? Teaching our kids to not waste or throw garbage in the street is a good middah. And like wazup says, lots of these ‘environmental’ fixes save companies money.
er, you are making things up. There are no “trash islands”, no “garbage patch”, and micro particles of plastic do no harm to any creature. There is no reason at all to cut down on the use of plastics. And wazup’s point is that Holiday Inn is merely using this fake “environmental” concern as an excuse to cut its costs by ceasing to provide a standard amenity. They’ve wished they could do it long ago, but customers would not put up with it. Now they can tell them they’re being green. But if other chains don’t match this move customers will go to them instead.
Hi Millhouse, is there lots and lots of trash the oceans? Yes. And lots of of small particles of plastic too, as you point out. Google it and you will find whales and fish with pounds of plastic in their guts. And smaller animals are attracted to the small particles instead of normal food, and so it harms them, shrinks their numbers and affects up the food chain. Do you like seeing plastic bags all over the streets? Holiday Inn will still be providing shampoo, don’t you worry. Sure, they are jumping on the eco-bandwagon, and even if they are spinning things like you say, the customers who will boycott Holiday Inn now because of this are certainly less than the customers who support the move. That’s not bad. That’s libertarian. It all comes down to whether one believes so much plastic is bad, ugly harmful, etc. The answer today typically comes down to whether if you rely on one source for news and info, unfortunately. from “conservative” point of view, just think how many more manufacturing and jobs you’d create in the U.S. by stopping all oil/plastic subsidies, thus allowing people to develop more alternative and green technology to compete.