Doing Our Part to Reduce Plastic Pollution

Here at the Fleur-de-Lys Mansion we pride ourselves in offering some of the value-adds that few hotels offer such as free soft drinks, fresh cookies and snacks, 24-hour coffee and tea, and much more.  But like most conscientious innkeepers, we are constantly reevaluating our model and methods to see if we can do better.  One thing that’s been bugging us lately is the issue of worldwide plastic pollution.  It’s largely hidden from most of us here in the US but not so in other parts of the world where it has become nothing short of a crisis as plastic waste washes up on shores.  We are strict about recycling as much as we can and being careful about purity of our single-stream recycling but it seems clear now more than ever that recycling is not the answer as this article from Scientific American effectively argues.  So we’re adopting a new policy that we hope our guests understand and appreciate.  

Very soon we will stop providing water bottles to our guests.  Our tap water tastes great, we offer chilled water from our kitchen dispenser, and will still provide free soft drinks.  It’s time for us to shift our collective thinking away from single-use plastics and other disposables.  The responsibility lies with us, not only in our personal and business habits but also in the way we vote for elected officials who continually defeat similar initiatives for the sake of good business.