Welcome to the hotel, California!

One of 2019’s happiest moments at Mercator HQ was when California announced the banning of single use plastics in hotel bathrooms. Applying to hotels with more than 50 rooms, the bill will come into force in 2023 – with heavy penalties for non-compliance (smaller hotels must follow in 2024).

Step into most resort rooms and you’ll find a plethora of plastics - from toiletries to beakers and minibar packaging, with no recycling options whatsoever. While the industry has been generally slow to catch on to customer demand for greener alternatives and there’s no suggestion that other states or countries will follow suit any time soon, some big chains have made the change to bigger, wall-mounted bathroom products independently. Travelodge replaced all of its miniature bottles back in 2015, and Malmaison swapped to refillable bottles last summer. Many have also banned plastic straws (and some pioneers have swapped from bottled to filtered water).

While this by no means fixes the single-use plastic problem in hotels, it’s definitely a step in the right direction – and we’d love to see more government/regional directives to push hotels to go greener.