The overwhelming plastic waste Hawaii visitors leave behind – SFGATE

"Liquid Avalanche" Sandy Beach in Oahu, Hawaii (by Floyd Manzano CC BY 2.0 via Flickr).

Plastics like in-room toiletries provided by resorts, plus to-go containers and cutlery provided by restaurants, are used and discarded by guests day after day. A single hotel chain can use hundreds of millions of little bottles of shampoo and conditioner every year.

When visitors leave, a lot of these items end up in the trash, yet Hawaii doesn’t have the infrastructure to recycle the immense amount of plastic left behind…