Mini Hotel Toiletries Are on the Way Out

It’s the end of an era. Those tiny hotel toiletries that you (or, maybe more accurately, your parents) loved to hoard are on the way out. According to House Beautiful, Hyatt has just joined InterContinental and Disney hotels and cruise ships in replacing its mini toiletries with large, refillable bottles of shampoo, conditioner, and soap.

While single-use toiletries can be convenient, they contribute to plastic pollution, which more and more companies are acknowledging as a serious problem.

“Plastic pollution is a global issue, and we hope our efforts will motivate guests, customers and, indeed, ourselves to think more critically about our use of plastic,” said Hyatt president and CEO, Mark Hoplamazian, in a statement. Hyatt will complete the switch to refillable toiletry bottles by June 2021.

House Beautiful points out that Hyatt’s decision is part of a larger shift in the hotel industry. California has already banned mini toiletry bottles in hotels, a law that will go into effect in 2023 for hotels with more than 50 rooms and in 2024 for smaller hotels. New York may soon follow suit, according to NBC.

While it’s hard to imagine hotel rooms without mini toiletries, many people don’t even use them, according to CleanConscience (via The Guardian). In the U.K. alone, 200 million of these little bottles per year end up in the landfill, where they will take hundreds of years to degrade.

If the thought of using bulk dispensers during a hotel stay doesn’t appeal to you, one good alternative is to buy your own TSA-friendly refillable bottles and load them with your favorite toiletries.

Between the toiletry switch and the phasing-out of full-size dressers, the hotel experience is changing. But when the reason is environmental responsibility, we’re all for it.