Topic 2 Tourism commitments

The Global Tourism Plastics Initiative requires tourism organizations to make a set of concrete and actionable commitments by 2025:

1. Eliminate problematic or unnecessary plastic packaging and items;
2. Take action to move from single-use to reuse models or reusable alternatives;
3. (Engage the value chain to) move towards 100% of plastic packaging to be reusable, recyclable or compostable;
4. Take action to increase the amount of recycled content across all plastic packaging and items used;
5. Collaborate and invest to increase the recycling and composting rates for plastics;
6. Report publicly and annually on progress made towards these targets.

Its goal is to unite the tourism sector behind a common vision to address the root causes of plastic pollution and to enable businesses, governments and other tourism stakeholders to take concerted action, leading by example in the shift towards circularity in the use of plastic

Some improvements have to be done at the regional level, for example improving and developing the waste management structures including recycling facilities. At the tourism sector level, especially hospitality, some measures can be taken to contribute to this waste management plan.

The 2 main types of items to focus on when considering plastic waste in tourism are:

• Packaging: as we have seen 40% of plastic in Europe is used to produce packaging,
• Single-use plastic items: because tourism industry is a high consumer of single-use items that are often made of plastic.

Actions on packaging will be seen in Module 9 “Redesigning Packaging”.