After almost a year of living in a worldwide pandemic, the UK is now introducing ‘quarantine hotel’ requirements for travellers. With a high success rate reported by New Zealand and Australia, the UK are expected to book over 28,000 hotel rooms for those who have travelled from ‘red list’ countries. However, it will be interesting to see how these operate and how the hotel chains manage their plastic waste pollution whilst doing so.
In Singapore, many chains – such as the DoubleTree by Hilton and the Pan Pacific Group – took an extra step to make their quarantine hotels as sustainable as possible, by investing in award winning laundry bags made from Hydropol™. The bags, which won the Laundry and Dry-Cleaning Award for best new product in 2020, retain all the characteristics of standard plastic laundry bags by being strong and puncture resistant with barrier properties. They have the added benefits of pathogen dwell time being reduced and dissolving fully and safely in industrial washing machines. Sealed bags (plus any Hydropol™ gloves and aprons) can be put directly into machines so that there is less risk of cross-contamination of COVID19 to either housekeeping or laundry staff. The bags completely dissolve on an 80C/176F wash cycle and biodegrade safely in the waste water system, leaving just clean laundry and no plastic residue in the machine.
For the Heads of Sustainability within hotel chains, this simple switch also helps solve the ‘coronavirus pollution’ crisis – enabling an increased use of PPE such as bags, aprons and gloves to reduce the risk of pathogen cross-contamination but without increasing their hotel group’s plastic pollution footprint.
To learn more about laundry bags made from Hydropol™ or be introduced to local suppliers making laundry bags from Hydropol™, please contact us or email info@aquapakpolymers.com.
