A bill passed last year by the Illinois General Assembly will require hotels to make a significant change that will impact customers beginning this summer.
SB 2960 officially took effect on Jan. 1, but provisions of the bill will finally start going into effect on July 1 thanks to the measure introduced by State Rep. Kam Buckner and State Sen. Laura Fine.
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WATCH HEREAccording to the text of the “Small Single-Use Plastic Bottle Act,” hotels in Illinois with 50 or more rooms will no longer be permitted to provide small single-use plastic bottles containing personal care products like shampoo or body wash.
That same requirement will go into effect for all other Illinois hotels beginning on Jan. 1, 2026, according to the text of the bill.
According to the Illinois Environmental Council, the state is the first in the Great Lakes region to ban the use of single-use plastic bottles in hotels.
Fine issued a statement after the bill was passed in the Senate, saying that the focus was to help protect the environment by reducing plastic pollution.
“According to researchers, by 2050, plastic could outweigh all fish in the oceans,” she said in a statement. “Personal products available in plastic bottles are common in hotels and pose immediate risk to our environment once they are thrown away. This bill puts our state on the path to being part of a solution by reducing plastic pollution.”
Chicago Politics
Some hotel chains have already begun phasing out or eliminating single-use plastic bottles, including Marriott, the largest chain in the world, which did so in 2019 and 2020.
Hyatt, a hotel chain owned by the Pritzker family, also phased out single-use plastic bottles in their establishments.
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