Lizette Smook's Blog

we all use towels in our daily life

we all use towels in our daily life

Hotels and Spas use a LARGE volume of towels

there are THREE sets of different sizes bought for every hotel room

Robes and towels in Hotels are washed EVERY day resulting in HUGE numbers in replenishment and huge numbers in landfill

It is for the last 4 years now that Innovasians has been marketing it's unique low carbon towels in Asia. Towels geberally have a tendency to 'snag' - yes when the thread is drawn when one of the loops on the surface is pulled or extended. This results in threads dangling from the towel surface that cannot be cut off. If these are in fact cut off - it will leave a hole.....
So towels at the poolside and in the Spa and the room add up to large purchases of towels. Millions of USD. You may not know but typically there are face towels and hand towels and bath sheets and ... and resulting in about 8 or 10 towels per room (exclusing poolside and Spa) depending if one counts the towelling bath mat and the pice of textile ate the toilet and oh, the piece of textile at your bed with your slippers on. THREE sets are bought per room: (a) one set in the room, (b) one set on the way to the laundry and (c) one set on the way from the laundry. So if you have 1200 rooms in the 5 star hotel - there would be 10 X 3 x 1200 towels JUST for the rooms (excluding Spas and poolsides). That is a whopping 36,000 towelling textile pieces laundered daily ....
Should these have 'snags' - these are thrown out and replenished with new purchases. The life span of a hotel towel is 150 washes on average. That is only 5 months use if washed every day (or if snagged - is repleced sooner). so in theory one hotel with 1200 rooms buy at least 36,000 every 5 months which is 172,000 towels in a 2 year cycle that go to landfill from ONE hotel....
The hotel chains with 43,000 rooms totally - it is simple math to calculate what is disposed of every 5 months.
Surpisingly (or not) in Asia the hotels generally do not consider towels when they assess environmental impact. It is good to look at food waste from the lavish buffet tables and carbon footprint (which is now at a point of being a little boring as saving the environment and climate change is not going to happen looking at carbon alone..) 
In a discussion with a well-known 5 star hotel chain we discussed:
a. roughly a saving of one budget purchase - if you have 10 hotels with 1200 rooms and rougly spend USD 10 million in a 2 year tender cycle, the Innovasians Eco Towel can save USD 10 Million (at least one purchase as this towel cannot 'snag' and has at least twice the life)
b. 30% saving in drying cost as these dry quicker
c. 30% saving in carbon of laundering these
So, what is stopping said hotel from walking their talk and saving environmental impact in HK and Asia through saving not only one budget run in 24 months BUT also saving the environmental impact of landfill in HK as half the wastage will go to landfill.
What will it take for Hotels in HK and Asia to see "beyond towels ..."