Lawmakers in New York pushed through a new law that will ban small, single-use containers for toiletries in hotels by 2025, with the threat of fines starting at $250 per violation.
Advocates say a ban on single-use plastic bottles will address a serious environmental problem. About 33 million pounds of plastic debris finds its way into the world’s oceans each year, entangling and killing some sea turtles and marine mammals.
But opponents say New York lawmakers are spending too much time with tiny plastic bottles as the state grapples with much bigger problems, including a global pandemic and a slow economic recovery.
“Is that what we came to legislate in Albany?” said Assemblyman Robert Smullen, R-Johnstown, who was surprised when the bill came up in his Committee on Environmental Conservation last year.
“We didn’t come here to regulate micro-sized plastic bottles. I just don’t agree with that kind of regulation. The heavy hand of the state, a $250 fine, for having the wrong bottles of shampoo in your hotel?” he added.
Democrats, Republicans and the hotel industry agreed during a brief debate on the law that reducing the amount of plastic bottles in the environment is a good thing. New York City hotels alone dispose of more than 27 million bottles of travel-size toiletries each year.
But some lawmakers and hotel owners question the need for a law to address a problem the industry largely solved by switching to larger, refillable soap and shampoo dispensers.
Marriott, Hilton and other large hotel chains committed as early as 2018 to remove single-use toiletries from their hotels and replace them with refillable dispensers. Marriott said all single-use plastic bottles will be phased out of its hotels by the middle of this year.
“The industry was already heading in that direction,” said Mark Dorr, president of the New York State Hospitality and Tourism Association.
“By the time this is implemented, everyone will be there anyway,” Dorr said of the new law. “So was there a need for an actual bill on that? I think that’s debatable.”
Before Gov. Kathy Hochul signed the bill into law three weeks ago, Dorr was among those who negotiated to delay its implementation from Jan. 1, 2024, to Jan. 1, 2025.
“For some of the smaller properties it’s not a cheap investment to do that,” Dorr said of the switch to refillable dispensers. “Those were the ones we were really trying to protect by getting the extra year to comply.”
New York is only the second state to pass such a law. In 2019, California lawmakers passed a law that prohibits hotels from providing travel-size plastic toiletries bottles beginning in 2023.
Assemblyman Steve Englebright, D-Suffolk, the bill’s sponsor in the Assembly, said the law and the threat of fines are necessary to make sure corporations do the right thing.
“The purpose of the fines is to try to draw the attention of these corporations,” he said.
The lawmaker added that officials from the state Department of Environmental Conservation could investigate complaints from hotels that violate the law.
“Most of the fulfillment will be driven by customer expectations,” Englebright said.
The Assemblyman believes that the voluntary actions of the hotel industry and the law will ultimately complement each other, ensuring that hotel operators do not go back on their promises.
“The Marriott Corporation is to be commended,” Englebright said. “But that doesn’t mean we’re overstepping the mark to have symmetry in the law with a policy that they’ve implemented across their various sites. That’s called redundancy, and redundancy is sometimes a good thing.”
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