Hotel chain to drop mini shampoos in bid to save environment

LONDON - 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 on Tuesday that the franchise's nearly 843,000 guest rooms are switching to bulk-size bathroom amenities. 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 the company to act responsibly.

Public awareness of the plastic waste problem has been growing.

Global plastic production increased to 380 million metric tons in 2015 from 2 million 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 percent of the 8.3 billion 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 tons of plastic entered the marine environment.

Associated Press

(China Daily 08/03/2019 page6)