BANGKOK, 23 April 2018: Last week the US-based Adventure Travel Association disclosed that 60% of adventure travel firms were handing out single-use plastic water bottles to their clients, despite efforts to end the practice.
There are calls for the travel industry and hospitality industries globally to end the distribution of single-use plastic bottles to show a commitment to ridding the world of an item that pollutes and takes more than 400 years to breakdown.
The three global giants of hospitality, Marriot, Accor and IHG, could make a difference by banning the use of single-use plastic water bottle in all of their properties. It should be a basic requirement of branding, across all hotel groups.
Booking websites such as Booking.com and Agoda should rate hotels for their green profile and one of the factors should be the absence of single-use plastic water bottles.
A recent study estimates the world has produced 8,300 million metric tons of plastic [1], most of which is used once, then discarded ending up in landfills and oceans.
Plastic is the number one source of pollution in our oceans,[2] which causes devastating destruction to marine life and shorelines around the world.
In Thailand, concerned marine and environment experts have called for urgent action to cut plastic pollution in its seas claiming the plastic residue is entering the food chain through contaminated fish.
This week a Canadian start-up announced efforts to change this global culture of unconscious waste, and switch people to a convenient, sustainable alternative: LUUMI.
Made of pure platinum silicone, LUUMI’s colourful products include bags, bowls, lids and straws. Platinum silicone is made of silica like glass, not oil like plastic, making it a very stable and highly resilient replacement for plastics.
“Human dependence on plastic and its impact on the planet has compelled us to start this movement to unplastic the world,” explains LUUMI founder Andrew Stromotich. “I believe small actions have big collective impacts, so if a single LUMMI bag can replace 240 plastic bags a year in one child’s lunch, imagine the impact of us all shifting off single use plastics?”
LUUMI has partnered with SeaLegacy, a passionate global non-profit founded by National Geographic Society explorers Paul Nicklen and Cristina Mittermeier and a community of photographers, filmmakers and storytellers invested in the health and sustainability of the world’s oceans.
This means that 10% of the sales of SeaLegacy cobranded LUUMI products will be go to SeaLegacy’s expeditions and programming.
“I have witnessed firsthand the global plastic problem and the devastating consequences it has on the oceans’ ecosystem and wildlife,” says Nicklen. “The world needs to reduce its plastic dependency and LUUMI is a practical solution to help fight this problem.”
LUUMI’s Let’s Unplastic the World campaign was launched on Earth Day, 22 April.
LUUMI prducts wil be available across Canada. For more details on the project visit Unplastic the World, visit: https://luumilife.com/
1 Science Advances – 2017
2 International Coastal Cleanup 2017 Report
