Sentosa Island, Singapore, to get rid of single-use plastic water bottles by 2023-end

To combat plastic pollution, all businesses on Sentosa Island, Singapore, have pledged to phase out disposable, single-use plastic water bottles by the end of 2023. The businesses range from hotels and food & beverage outlets to any events held on the island.

Sentosa Island in Singapore, one of the top leisure travel destinations in South-East Asia, is taking a step towards sustainable travel and tourism. Photo courtesy: Pixabay/Joongkeun Lee

This will eliminate an estimated 2 million plastic water bottles per year on the island, helping Sentosa take another step towards sustainable tourism.

The water in plastic bottles will be replaced by still/sparkling water in glass bottles, glass jugs, and filtered piped water from filter taps, where a visitor can fill their own bottle or glass.

Instead of drinking out of plastic bottles, visitors to Sentosa will drink still and sparkling water from glassware. Photo courtesy: Pixabay/Bob

Disposable plastic bottles that choke the environment are used not only for packaging drinking but also hotel amenities such as shampoo, shower gel etc. Most hotel guests use only a part of the contents of each amenity bottle placed in the bathroom, and then the bottles are discarded by the hotel when the guest checks out.

To curb pollution from these small plastic bottles in hotel bathrooms, the Outpost Hotel Sentosa and Oasia Resort Sentosa reportedly plan to instal wall-mounted and refillable containers for shampoo etc in all guest rooms from this month.

This is what plastic trash looks like, once the single-use plastic bottles and other single-use plastic items are discarded. Photo courtesy: Pixabay