Reducing plastic waste in hotels

Tammy Ven Dange, , , 2 Comments on Reducing plastic waste in hotels

I’ve been working on another project for nearly two months. This one is purposely designed for reducing plastic waste in hotels. As a natural wanderer, I usually take two to three overseas trips a year. I love exploring new places and food and staying in nice hotels.

So, when some of the major hotels made public commitments to reduce their plastic waste, I wondered what they would do. Many have opted to use dispensers or larger bottles.

However, I’ve never been a fan of these myself. For one, it’s too easy for people to tamper with the refillable bottles when they are staying in private rooms. Can you imagine the temptation for pranksters to put bodily fluids or something worse into those bottles?

It also doesn’t support the higher end brands who have worked so hard to build a certain feel. To me, a dispenser on the wall feels more like a locker room shower rather than a four or five-star luxury hotel no matter how fancy the bottles are.

Furthermore, many travellers like to take home the little hotel amenities as souvenirs from their holidays and perhaps to use them at the gym or while camping later. I personally stockpiled them for my own guests when I had a bigger home. It made their stay feel a little more luxurious then my normal guest bedroom.

So, what to do? I’ve already presented some alternative packaging ideas to a few hotels in Canberra, and they’ve been very receptive. If all goes well, I hope to get a commitment to run a pilot soon.

The main challenge for me right now is not the packaging, it’s the cost of all natural ingredients for the products themselves. While many hotels are not as concerned about what’s on the inside of the container, I am. I cannot with good conscious offer a product to reduce plastic waste and put something in it that’s not just as eco-friendly.

If I can overcome these cost barriers by doing more of the work myself or perhaps partnering with a local business (discussions still in progress), then I feel like we can have something ready to go as early as next month.

Fingers crossed! I need a few more things to line up first, but this idea to reduce plastic waste in hotels seems to have a solid customer demand.

A walk in nature

Tammy Ven Dange, , , , Leave a Comment on A walk in nature

There’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of nature. So, over the holidays I decided to take a little walk in nature in New Zealand – one of the most beautiful places in the world. Still, I wondered before I got there if it would have the same issues with plastic waste as other places I have been recently.

This trip sent me to Wellington and then Picton where a boat took us to the start of the Queen Charlotte Track in the famous Marlborough wine region. For five glorious days, we hiked the sometimes difficult pathway to see breathtaking views of the area.

Views from the Queen Charlotte Track
Views from the Queen Charlotte Track

I even had a chance to go out for a paddle where we saw Eagle rays and a seal sunning himself on the back of a small yacht.

Wildlife sightings along the Queen Charlotte Track.
Wildlife sightings

What I didn’t see was a lot of rubbish which was really surprising, especially in the harbours. Instead, I saw just two pieces: a floating plastic bag that we couldn’t reach and a famous bottle where a tree decided to grow around it.

Rubbish sightings on the Queen Charlotte Track
Rubbish sightings on the Queen Charlotte Track

This was incredible given the number of backpackers and boat traffic we saw there. It could only mean that everyone was doing their part to keep the environment clean.

And it was likely the little things that made a difference. All of our packed lunches were in paper bags (and so were offered shopping bags). I was given a recyclable container for my salad which was of a much stronger material than what you normally see in Australia. Bamboo utensils and paper straws were the norm everywhere. We were encouraged to refill our drink bottles from the taps.

I especially liked the reusable coffee cup the tour operator gave us for our daily morning teas. No council in New Zealand recycles coffee cups. So this was a really nice and practical souvenir.

Reusable souvenir coffee cup

While I haven’t had a chance to research their recycling situation in New Zealand, overall I have to say that I was really impressed by how clean this part of the country was during my walk in nature. And they seem to have done this by focussing more on the reduction of plastic waste – a lesson all communities can easily adopt.

Would you pay to recycle?

Tammy Ven Dange, , , , , , 1 Comment on Would you pay to recycle?

I had just arrived at my parents’ house on Wednesday, and my mother insisted that their curbside recycling bin would take any form of plastic. I was sceptical because in all my research, I hadn’t heard of such a generous recycling program anywhere. So, I looked it up to verify and sure enough, she was right.

Their city website confirmed that Plastics #1 – #7 were accepted in their curb-side recycling bins as part of their mandatory recycling program.

Materials that can be recycled
Current recyclables in my parent’s hometown

“Wow! I’m really surprised that they can take anything when no other place in Australia or America seems to be able to do this,” I told my father.

“Yeah, but they’re about to change it in terms of what we can recycle,” he said but wasn’t sure what the changes were.

The Future of Recycling

I did a little bit of research to find that the city will no longer require mandatory recycling starting in September 2019. Instead it will only provide it as an optional curb-side pick up for $10/week. Furthermore, while they’ve been taking any form of plastic up until now, they’ll only accept plastics that are clear or white in the future.

Yes, they will now have to pay to recycle far fewer materials!

With my parents on pensions, the extra $520 a year is a pretty big burden especially when the city will no longer accept other materials like paper or glass either. I suspect that they and many others will quit recycling all together because it’s too hard and expensive.

Below shows the reduced list of recyclable materials for them.

Reduced list of recycled materials
Reduced list of recycled materials starting in September 2019

On this cross-country trip across the US to visit family members, I’ve found that the smaller towns and cities are struggling the most since China and other countries quit accepting our rubbish as imports. Today, it’s costing the recyclers money to get rid of the materials where they use to sell it for a profit just last year.

This is exactly the problem I feared when I started The Refoundry. Now, I feel the sense of urgency to move forward faster to expand the business into the US.

Question for you: Would you pay to recycle if your city quit offering it for free?

I’m afraid that this may be the way of the future for many places.

The challenges of recycling in middle America

Tammy Ven Dange, , , , , , , 1 Comment on The challenges of recycling in middle America

I’m travelling throughout the US right now visiting family. Amongst my stops this week was to see my 92 year old great aunt in Kansas. She was no longer able to drive after a fall last year, and so I offered to take her around town to do any errands.

Her first request? She wanted me to help her drop off things to be recycled at three different locations.

They don’t have curb side pick-up of recyclables like they do in many cities in the US and Australia. Instead, if you want to recycle anything in middle America, you have to work a lot harder.

Cans went to a Boy Scout troop. Soft plastics went to to only grocery store in town, and everything else had to be physically dropped off at a drive through warehouse at the edge of Main Street.

Boy Scout Can Collection Site

I spoke to the guy that helped us at the warehouse. He said that they used to have 6 different satellite collection locations in the surrounding towns, but now they were down to just one.

Because China and the other Asian countries were no longer taking most American recyclables, the materials that they were collecting were practically worthless. The only thing keeping this location from closing was the financial support from their local government.

Recyclables Drop off Warehouse

In so many ways, this demonstrates the even bigger problem that America has regarding plastic waste because of its size. So many people want to recycle, but there is little demand for the materials now.

My plans for The Refoundry are to expand our product lines to the US if all goes well in Australia. After all, the need to do something with plastic waste is not limited by borders. In the meantime, 91% of US plastic is going to landfill despite the efforts of people like my aunt.

Despite her age and inability to drive, she’s still determined to do her part to help the environment. I know there are others, but it’s going to take a huge coordinated effort to turn things around in middle America.

America – home of the plastic waste

Tammy Ven Dange, , , , , , , 1 Comment on America – home of the plastic waste

I’ve been visiting family in mid-Western America this last few days, and it’s a bit of a shock to see so little concern about plastic waste here.

At restaurants, there are already straws in the water glasses before I can say no thanks. Every checkout other than Whole Foods gives out single-use plastic bags without concern. In grocery stores, it’s hard to find anything not meticulously wrapped in plastic packaging. Most every online shopping box that arrives at my brother’s house is full of plastic fillers.

On top of that, I found a just released study from the Environmental Protection Agency from 2015 (not sure why it took them so long) that showed only 9% of plastic is being recycled here in America. This is incredibly scary given that Australia has only 7% of the population of the US, but manages to recycled 32% of plastic. That’s still a lot of plastic going to landfills.

With the strong US petroleum industry and the high cost of recycled plastic, there’s little incentive to change without significant consumer demand. That’s why the solution in America that will likely have the biggest impact will be incinerators like the one being made by Sierra Energy. Their technology is meant turn rubbish to fuel or energy without also creating emissions.

Is this a solution that should also be considered in Australia? It already is.

The question isn’t really about which solution (i.e. reduce, recycle or reuse) because all three will likely be needed to help minimise the impacts of plastic rubbish.

Really it’s about changing people – although the hardest to do. This alone will make the biggest difference of all. And in Australia, based on the stats and my observations, it seems so far that we’re more willing to change than Americans when it comes to helping with this plastic problem.