Recently, a regulation of the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism has aroused discussions among many tourism enthusiasts and hotel practitioners.
This document means that starting from July 1 this year, the tourism and accommodation industry in Shanghai will not take the initiative to provide six disposable daily necessities: toothbrushes, combs, razors, shoe polishes, bath polishes, and nail files. Moreover, if the hotel is found to provide violations, it will also be punished according to law.
Shanghai has also become the first city in the country to restrict the use of disposable products.
—— Interpretation of the new regulations——
The six small items mentioned in the new regulations refer to toothbrushes, combs, bath wipes, razors, nail files, and shoe polishes. Disposable items such as toothpaste, shampoo, body wash, and slippers are not included. included in the list.
On the one hand, these are consumables that can be reused in the guest room. On the other hand, liquids exceeding 100ml cannot be carried on the plane. Therefore, for the convenience of guests, toothpaste, body wash and other supplies are not yet in the catalogue.
In addition, the regulations mention “not actively providing”, which means that the hotel does not take the initiative to put these items in the guest room, but if guests need them, they can ask the hotel to provide them for free. However, there is still a charge for non-disposable items sold in hotel convenience stores.
——The hotel industry wastes 400,000 tons of soap every year——
For a long time, disposable items in hotels have caused huge waste.
According to statistics, there are about 440,000 hotels in the country in 2018, and about 5kg of disposable soaps are discarded in each hotel every day. After a year, the total amount of discarded soaps exceeds 400,000 tons. If it is calculated at 20,000 yuan per ton Calculated, this is a waste of 8 billion yuan.
A young man named Sean Sepler in the United States used these discarded soaps to save 10 million children from dying.
The non-profit organization CTW (Clean the World) he founded cooperated with 5,000 international hotels and distributed more than 45 million bars of soap to people in poor areas for free.
Don’t underestimate these humble soaps, they are used to save children who are too poor to buy soap, but die of pneumonia and diarrheal diseases.
By simply washing your hands with soap, you can avoid 1/3 of respiratory diseases, 1/2 of dysentery, and reduce the death rate by 60%
With the efforts of Sean and volunteers, the mortality rate of children under 5 years old from diarrhea and pneumonia has dropped by 35%, saving more than 10 million people in 150 countries around the world.
In China, although we do not have similar organizations and recycling institutions, we can first pass corresponding policies to control waste generation from the source.
Like the new regulations introduced by Shanghai this time, Xiao U feels that they are very environmentally friendly and hope that they can be promoted to other provinces across the country.
—— What can we and the hotel do——
It is inconvenient for guests and troubles for hotels, but environmental protection is an inevitable trend in the future development of hotels. For the hotel industry, how to resolve this crisis also needs to be considered.
For example, the 7-day chain hotel actually canceled the supply of disposable items in the guest rooms three years ago, and at the same time, the basic room rate dropped by 18 yuan, which is equivalent to removing the cost of these items from the room rate, and it has also been welcomed by many tourists. .
But for mid-to-high-end hotels, these high-quality disposable products are originally one of their selling points. Where will these hotels go in the future? Let’s wait and see~
Of course, the biggest problem is that the hotel cancels the provision of disposable items, which brings inconvenience to passengers. In cities with frequent business trips like Beijing and Shanghai, many people forget or don’t even know that they need to bring their own toothbrush and other supplies.
But for us consumers, in terms of convenience, the cancellation of the six small items is not a bad thing. In addition to being environmentally friendly, bringing your own toiletries is also cleaner and more suitable for you, isn’t it?
At the moment when hotel hygiene problems are frequent, Xiao U believes that many people, like me, have to bring their own towels and bath towels when they check in, let alone the “six small pieces”. The disposable utensils provided by the hotel are basically not used.
Although this policy introduced by Shanghai has a considerable impact on hotels and tourists, there is still a long way to go for hotels to be green and environmentally friendly. I hope that there will be more convenient, economical and environmentally friendly measures to improve the status quo in the future.
Do you support the cancellation of six small pieces?
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