Beloved travel-size shampoo and conditioner bottles might be checking out of hotels soon.
House Bill 348 would ban small single-use plastic bottles in hotels, motels, and bed and breakfasts — essentially any place with 50 or more lodging rooms — starting next year. Once 2028 rolls around, this ban will apply to any location that provides one or more rented rooms for lodging.
The bill comes in an effort to reduce plastic waste across the islands, which follows the state’s plastic bag ban in 2021.
Hanna Lilley is the Hawaiʻi regional manager of the Hawaiʻi Surfrider Foundation, one of the leading organizations battling plastic pollution and fighting for clean oceans in the state.
“There's only three places for plastics to go, either to our landfills, H-POWER or shipping off island,” Lilley said. “We have a critical landfill shortage here in Hawaiʻi and are running out of time and space. In 2019 alone Hawaiʻi shipped nearly 36 million pounds of recycling to California, making this someone else's issue, and the Department of Health only keeps track of the first leg so we have no idea where it really goes.”
She noted that the trash-burning H-POWER facility on Oʻahu is not the best solution either, because it releases contaminants and greenhouse gases.
Hawaiʻi averages roughly 9 million tourists annually, and the state has about 150 hotels. If each hotel provides one or two small bottles per room, that’s a whole lot of plastic waste. But Lilley argued that this bill wouldn’t only benefit the environment — it would also be cost-effective for hotels.
“Marriott in 2018 said a large pump bottle contains the same amount of product as around 10 to 12 small single-use toiletry bottles, which could save hotels around $2,000 a year,” Lilley said.
Marriott and Hyatt are two of the largest hotel chains that have gradually decreased their use of plastic products, and have switched to larger bottles or wall-mounted dispensers.
Ultimately, supporters of the bill want a cleaner island and more conservation efforts to be passed. With more research coming out about the impacts of microplastics on human and environmental health, this bill comes at a time when sustainability measures are crucial.
“There's 171 trillion fragments of plastic estimated to pollute the upper regions of the world’s oceans,” Lilley said. “It’s permeating our food chains in humans and animals alike, and as more research emerges around the health concerns of microplastic, it's becoming more clear that they have potential to disrupt all of our systems and pose a serious health risk.”
The bill passed through the Senate Judiciary Committee and will go back to the full floor.
