The world's largest hotel chain just took a big step toward being more sustainable.
Yesterday, Marriott announced that it's expanding an initiative to get rid of small, single-use bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and shower gel in all bathrooms. Though that might mean you can't hoard a bunch of those tiny bottles in your suitcase before you leave, it's good news for the environment.
The hotel chain will begin offering larger, pump-topped bottles of the toiletries at around 1,000 of its North American properties. As of the announcement, Marriott expects for the change to be rolled out at most of the properties by December 2020.
This decision to eliminate single-use bottles comes a little over a year after Marriott International announced it would remove plastic straws worldwide by July 2019. It's also part of a larger trend of big companies from Walt Disney World to Starbucks rolling out sustainability initiatives.
According to a press release issued by Marriott yesterday, when the use of large, pump-topped toiletry bottles are introduced at Marriott properties across the globe, 500 million small bottles annually are expected to be prevented from going to landfills, which comes to about 1.7 million pounds of plastic. So far, around 1,400 Marriott properties offer larger-pump-topped bottles. But, as it's got over 7,000 properties total around the globe, the chain still has some changes to make.