Three hotels in Malta have joined a scheme to check out plastic waste that will see them scrap items like free miniature shampoos and bottled water for guests.
Hilton Malta, 1926 Hotel and Spa, and Mellieħa Holiday Centre have all signed up to the international project SUPMed, which aims to reduce single-use plastics in the Mediterranean.
Sabrina Mifsud, director of rooms at Hilton Malta, says it has already stopped offering complimentary bottles of water to guests and has instead installed filters to make tap water safe to drink.
"We are using 800 fewer bottles a day," she said.
The five-star hotel has also scrapped mini shampoo, conditions and body-wash toiletries, switching to refillable dispensers.
Ten hotels in Malta, Greece and Cyprus are participating in the pilot programme run by Maltese environmental consultancy AIS Environment, and funded by Iceland-Lichtenstein-Norway grants.
“Only 30 per cent of single use plastic is recycled,” Sian Pledger an environmental scientist told an online conference on the programme.
This project aims to reduce two tons of SUP waste across the ten participating hotels, every summer.
The hotels are taking action such as replacing plastic beverage bottles with glass bottles, increasing the use of reusable food containers and replacing wet wipes with cotton handkerchiefs.
Staff are also being trained on waste management, installing refillable soap dispensers in rooms, reducing cosmetic packaging, limiting the use of gloves when hand washing is viable, and ensuring bin liners are full before collection.
Chief Operations Officer of 1926 Hotel and Spa Sascha Sammut said the hotel joined the project because sustainability is one of the hotel’s key pillars.
“If we can implement policies to be more environmentally conscious and help our guests be more responsible, then we are happy to do it,” he said.
Since January 2021, a list of single-use products have been banned in the EU, including plastic cotton bud sticks, cutlery, plates, straws, stirrers, balloon sticks. Polystyrene containers and cups are also banned as part of a wider push to reduce plastic waste.
Mario Schembri, CEO of AIS Environment explained that the project will draft an action plan for each hotel and create a best practice guide as a tool for hotels and the tourism sector in general in avoiding single-use plastic.
A digital platform that lays out the environmental impact of different types of single-use plastic has also been developed.
According to Pledger, 80 per cent of marine litter is single use plastic which does not biodegrade and often turns to microplastics, with serious environmental consequences.
Globally, 400 million tonnes of CO2 is produced by plastic production and incineration, each year, she said.