Beach Plans? Hotel Plastics May Mar Your Vacation

Green Century° Files Shareholder Proposals Asking Major Hotels To Cut Plastic

(Boston, MA) Dreaming of a pristine tropical escape this season? When you step out of your hotel, in addition to the hot sand between your toes, you may be surprised to find hundreds of plastic containers and bags littering the beach.

Plastic pollution, which often comes from single-use plastics, endangers the world’s most beautiful places by harming biodiversity. Plastic enters the stomachs of seabirds and turtles and damages vital mangrove forests and coral reefs.

To address financial risk from plastic use, Green Century° announced it has filed shareholder resolutions at major hotel brands Hilton*, Marriott*, and Choice Hotels* asking the companies to measure, disclose, and reduce their plastic use.

“Unfortunately, we are headed the exact wrong direction with plastic pollution,” said Leslie Samuelrich, President of the Green Century Funds. “Corporations have created a growing tidal wave of single-use plastic that is damaging our cherished coastlines.”

While there are many causes of plastic pollution at our favorite destinations, the hotel industry is often overlooked. Hotels supply millions of single-use plastic bottles, bags, mini toiletry bottles, and cups wrapped in plastic each year. Experts suggest that 32% of all plastic packaging ends up in the ocean, and that at least 15% of plastic used by hotels and conferences is unnecessary.

Consumers are increasingly concerned by the single-use plastic crisis, with a Reuters global survey suggesting that 75% of the world’s population would support a single-use plastic ban. Yet, hotel chains are lagging in acknowledging and addressing their contribution to the problem.

“What gets measured gets managed, and these hotel chains are not measuring their plastic habit,” said Douglass Guernsey, a Green Century shareholder advocate working on the circular economy. “Hotels need to understand the amount of plastic waste they are creating and then set goals for reducing it.”

Single-use plastic regulations have gone into effect in the EU, China, India, California and elsewhere around the world. Also, investors are concerned that companies’ contributions to plastic pollution may affect shareholder value and cause environmental harm. Investors representing US $10 trillion in assets signed a statement in 2023 urging immediate cuts to single-use plastic.

Measuring a company’s footprint can be complex, but it is an increasingly common practice. In 2023, CDP plastic, the sustainability disclosure platform, saw companies worth US $31 trillion voluntarily share information related to their plastic footprint.

Green Century has worked with many notable brands to address corporate plastic footprints, including Costco which recently pledged to share the plastic footprint of its Kirkland Signature brand in Q3 of 2024.

“Nothing we use for less than a minute should pollute our environment for hundreds of years,” said Guernsey. “Our shareholder proposals ask Marriott, Hilton, and Choice to take the commonsense step of measuring their plastic footprints and figuring out what they can cut.”