New Delhi: ITC Hotels will discontinue single-use plastic in all its hotels, from December 31 following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement to restrict the use of single-use plastic in the country.
“ITC Hotels has been adopting sustainable practices for over two decades with responsible luxury as its guiding premise – delivering authentic indigenous experiences, which are in harmony with the environment and society,” Dipak Haksar, Chief Executive, ITC Hotels and Welcome Hotel said in a statement.
ITC Hotels was one of the first firms to introduce glass bottles in the year 2012.
ITC, on Monday, also launched campaign against single-use plastic in several schools and colleges in Guntur. The company has also formed special teams to visit educational institutes to spread environmental awareness in various cities.
A few years ago, ITC Hotels conducted a study to map the plastic items in use across hotels. While they had already done away with use of single use plastic bottles, even then to their surprise, the final list was about 350 plastic items that are used in any hotel. Out of this, 150 items were single use plastic items. A large number out of that was ‘front of the house’ or visible and used by guests.
The chain realized that the usage of plastic went way beyond just water bottles and it needed to be tackled as a wholesome exercise than merely stating they have done away with plastic straws and bottles. From coming up with wooden stirrers, cutlery and combs paper cups, bamboo toothbrushes and cotton buds, silicone shower caps, steel and paper lids for beverages, paper wraps for flowers, compostable garbage bags, glass bottles and wood and steel hangars and clips, chains such as ITC are ensuring steps that completely do away with any plastic in the guest area by October 2, and do away with almost 160 plastic items by December.
“Bathroom kits, razor, toothbrush, shirt hangers, shower caps, cotton buds, cutlery, sachets drink stirrer, lids on disposable glass, waste bags to flowers being wrapped, plastic was extensively being used. We decided to phase all of it out and become a plastic free chain,”
H C Vinayaka, VP sustainability, ITC Hotels
Single-use plastic is disposable plastic like polythene bags, straws, food wrappers, plastic drinking bottle, sachets, etc. Every year India generates 9.46 million tonnes of plastic waste,of which 43 per cent is single-use.
