Hyatt Hotels Corp: Sustainable Packaging Policies for Plastics

WHEREAS: Without immediate and sustained new commitments throughout the plastics value chain, annual flows of plastics into oceans could nearly triple by 2040.[1]

The growing plastic pollution crisis poses increasing risks to Hyatt. Corporations could face an annual financial risk of approximately $100 billion should governments require them to cover the waste management costs of packaging they produce.[2] Governments around the world are increasingly enacting such policies, including five new state laws that impose fees on corporations for single-use plastic (SUP) packaging.[3] The European Union has banned ten common SUP pollutants and imposed a tax on non-recycled plastic packaging waste.[4] Additionally, consumer demand for sustainable packaging is increasing.[5]

Pew Charitable Trusts’ groundbreaking study, Breaking the Plastic Wave, concluded that improved recycling alone is insufficient to address plastic pollution – instead, recycling must be coupled with reductions in use, materials redesign, and substitution.[6] At least one-third of plastic use can be reduced, and reduction is the most viable solution from environmental, economic, and social perspectives.[7]

Recent legislation in California, New York, and Washington bans or limits hotels from disbursing small plastic bathroom amenity bottles,[8] demonstrating a heightened need for the industry to proactively address plastic use.

Competitors Hilton, Marriott, and Choice have committed to measure, disclose, and reduce their SUP, each agreeing to set a new plastic reduction goal no later than 2026.[9] At least sixty additional consumer goods and retail companies maintain plastic reduction goals and disclose primary packaging data.[10] Hyatt lags peers in plastic packaging transparency; it fails to disclose, among other information, total tons of plastic used and the percentage that is recyclable or recycled.

Hyatt had a goal to transition to large-format bathroom amenity bottles by 2021, but failed to report any quantifiable progress towards meeting this goal.[11] Our Company must calculate and report the overall amount of SUP and plastic packaging it uses and evaluate how it could set and achieve an overall plastic packaging reduction goal as competitors have done.

Our Company could avoid regulatory, environmental, and competitive risks by adopting a comprehensive approach to plastic packaging use.

BE IT RESOLVED: Shareholders request that the Board issue a report, at reasonable expense and excluding proprietary information, describing how Hyatt could reduce its plastics use in alignment with the one-third reduction findings of the Pew Report, or other authoritative sources, to reduce its contribution to plastic pollution.

SUPPORTING STATEMENT: The report should, at Board discretion: