Get ready to step up your vacation packing game if you are headed to California. You, and you alone are now responsible for lathering up while on vacay. California governor Gavin Newsom has signed a law banning hotels from providing the mini plastic disposable bottles of personal-care products like shampoo and conditioners to guests. “The ban on plastic bottles holding less than six ounces will go into effect on January 1, 2023 for hotels with 50 or fewer rooms” reported The National Review.
Additionally, the law “allows a local agency to conduct inspections and issue citations if hotels do not comply.” First violations will cost $500 and second violations will be a $2,000 fine. Democratic state assemblyman Ash Kalra who wrote the bill proudly stated California is “the first state in the country to accelerate more sustainable alternatives in hotel and lodging industry.” Kalra also stated what a “model for the nation” California will be because of the state’s lucrative tourism.
Hotel chains are already boasting their environmental moves. Marriott International is aiming to “eliminate small plastic bottles at all its hotels by December 2020” and IHG group which owns multiple hotel chains “plans to eliminate close to 200 million small bottles by 2021.” Now guests who forget their personal items will just have to go to a local drugstore and buy full-sized products that they throw away after a weekend’s use because they cannot take more than 3.4 ounces on the airplane.
The law reads:
This bill, commencing January 1, 2023, for lodging establishments with more than 50 rooms, and January 1, 2024, for lodging establishments with 50 rooms or less, would prohibit a lodging establishment, as defined, from providing a small plastic bottle containing a personal care product to a person staying in a sleeping room accommodation, in any space within the sleeping room accommodation, or within a bathroom shared by the public or guests. The bill would authorize a local agency with authority to inspect sleeping accommodations in a lodging establishment to enforce these requirements by issuing a citation, provided that the local agency be required to issue a written warning upon a first violation of the above requirement, and to impose a penalty in the amount of $500 for a 2nd or subsequent violation, not to exceed $2,000 annually. The bill would provide that a lodging establishment that is in violation of the above requirement is liable for a civil penalty in the amount of $500 for a first violation and $2,000 for a 2nd or subsequent violation and would authorize the Attorney General or a district attorney, county counsel, or city attorney to bring an action to impose the civil penalty.
