Dive Brief:
- The Illinois State Senate passed a bill aimed at phasing out the use of small, single-use plastic bottles at hotels across the state, according to a release by the office of Illinois State Senator Laura Fine, who, along with seven other state senators, sponsored the bill.
- Senate Bill 2960 would create the Small Single-Use Plastic Bottle Act, requiring Illinois hotels to eliminate small plastic bottles containing personal care products like shampoo or shower gel in guest rooms and public restrooms. The legislation now heads to the Illinois House of Representatives for further consideration.
- The bill puts Illinois on the path to significantly reducing plastic pollution, Fine said in the release. The legislation mirrors acts passed in other states in recent years, though some hotels are already cutting back on single-use plastics.
Dive Insight:
If passed, the Small Single-Use Plastic Bottle Act would prohibit Illinois hotels with 50 rooms or more from providing single-use plastic bottles containing personal care products for overnight guests and in the property’s public restroom as of July 1, 2025. For hotels with less than 50 rooms, the law would take effect Jan. 1, 2026.
The legislation has the potential to “drastically reduce plastic waste in Illinois,” Sen. Fine said in a statement, adding that the single-use plastic bottles commonly offered at hotels “pose immediate risk to our environment once they are thrown away,” particularly oceans.
Fine, citing researchers, said that by 2050, “plastic could outweigh all fish in the oceans.”
Jeff Watters, vice president of external affairs at nonprofit environmental advocacy group Ocean Conservancy, agreed that the single-use plastics offered at hotels “are a huge threat to our ocean.”
“Illinois and the Great Lakes are directly connected to our ocean through the St. Lawrence Seaway and the Mississippi River. With tens of millions of visitors coming to Chicago every year, this bill will make a huge impact in reducing single-use plastics,” Watters said in a statement obtained by Hotel Dive.
Senate Bill 2960 is similar to legislation passed in California, New York and, most recently, Washington, where a single-use plastics ban at hotels is set to go into effect Jan. 1, 2025.
Some hotel companies — such as Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt — are already phasing out single-use plastics, including replacing single-use toiletry bottles with full-size pump dispensers and adding water refilling stations in lieu of offering plastic water bottles.
Both Marriott and Hilton began measures to reduce plastic waste across their portfolios in 2019. The companies have said in public statements that the vast majority of their hotels have switched from single-use plastic bottles to “larger pump-topped bottles” of shampoo and the like at Marriott and “full-sized dispensers” at Hilton.
