Phase Out Mini Plastic Toiletry Bottles in Lodging Establishments

Our Surfrider Chapters in Hawaiʻi are determined to reduce plastic pollution in lodging establishments by passing House Bill 1948.

This bill seeks to phase out mini personal care plastic packaging (shampoos, conditions, lotions, and soaps) at hotels and other lodging establishments in Hawaiʻi. Instead, hotels will install bulk dispensers or use non-plastic packaging for their personal care products.

As of December, the State of Hawaiʻi received nearly 9.5 million visitors in 2025, over six times the state's population. The visitor industry significantly contributes to plastic pollution which often ends up on beaches and in the ocean. This measure applies to lodging establishments defined as hotels, condominium hotels, motels, resorts, bed-and-breakfast homes, and transient vacation rentals. Hawaiʻi has over 280 hotel-class lodging properties, along with hundreds of bed-and-breakfast homes and tens of thousands of transient vacation rental units operating statewide. By eliminating small, single-use plastic toiletry containers at lodging facilities, this bill would prevent millions of plastic bottles each year from entering the waste stream, creating a scalable, source-based solution to reduce the plastic footprint of Hawaiʻi’s tourism industry—one lodging establishment and one traveler at a time.

Not only will HB1948 reduce plastic pollution, but it will also save hotels money. In 2018, Marriott stated that they could save about $2,000 per hotel every year by switching from single-use toiletry bottles to bulk containers. According to Marriot, a large pump bottle contains the same amount of product as around 10-12 small single-use toiletry bottles. Additionally, we estimate that hotels spend about $0.37 per ounce on shampoo, conditioner, and lotion bottles packaged in small plastic containers compared to $0.17 per ounce on shampoo, condition, and lotion packaged in bulk.

Similar laws have passed in California, New York, Washington, and Illinois. The change will apply to large hotels with more than 50 rooms beginning in 2027 and smaller hotels in 2029. This gives hotels plenty of time to adapt. Considering the scale of the visitor industry in Hawaiʻi, it is time that Hawaiʻi follows suit.

HB1948 directly aligns with our Ocean Friendly Hotel program which helps hotels to reduce single-use plastic and make more sustainable choices for the ocean. One of the mandatory criteria is that toiletries (shampoo, conditioner, shower gel, lotion, etc.) are not packaged in small plastic bottles. 

Surfrider Hawai’i is leading the charge to pass this bill.