Have you ever gotten in a hotel shower and have no idea what was in each bottle? What started as a casual observation turned into a lengthy evaluation over the last several years. I started paying attention when hotels made the move from small individual bottles for everything to large refillable containers suspended on the wall of the shower or near the bathroom sink. Without my glasses I can barely see anything in medium print, and I can’t begin to read small print. Fine print is all but invisible to me. The experience became frustrating, not because the product was bad, but because the labeling and layout created confusion instead of clarity.
In general, these products don’t seem designed with Generation X eyes or sensibilities in mind. The branding may be visually appealing, but it misses the mark for clarity. I understand that these partnerships are meant to benefit both the hotel and the personal care brand, exposure for one, perceived luxury for the other. And if I recognize the brand as high-quality, cool, or especially eco-friendly, it might even earn the hotel some goodwill. If the product were truly exceptional, I might be inclined to buy it for home use. But instead, I’m just irritated.
One example of a brand using clear labelling is Disney. In their hotels, it is immediately clear what product is in each dispenser. There’s no ambiguity, no guessing game. That matters, especially when you consider that it’s often the grandparents who are footing the bill for these multigenerational family vacations. By designing with clarity and accessibility in mind, Disney not only enhances the guest experience but also reinforces brand trust. They understand that when you make things easy and intuitive for your customer, you’re not just meeting expectations, you’re building loyalty.
Much like the frustration of deciphering mystery bottles in a hotel shower where branding overshadows clarity and accessibility, the recycling industry suffers from its own version of poor labeling. In both cases, the user is left guessing, whether it’s shampoo or conditioner, or polypropylene versus polyethylene with a flip-flop thrown in as a wild card. Hotels that prioritize clear, consistent labeling enhance trust and usability and are marketing to a specific customer base that has money. The recycling system needs to recognize their emerging customers as ones who prioritize transparency and reliability across the value chain. Without it, processors are stuck with contaminated, mislabeled feedstock, like trying to wash your hair with body wash and hoping for the best.
When buyers purchase a bale labeled “PP” (polypropylene) they know they are potentially getting ~60% PP, ~10% HDPE, ~5% LDPE, ~2% metal, and ~23% trash that all varies bale to bale, truck to truck and month to month. As a purchaser, you drive down the buy price to compensate for the poor quality. Now consider a converter trying to produce a reliable product from reprocessed pellets made from that mix. Blending PP with PE compromises material properties but if the customer doesn’t complain more material gets utilized. Improving it requires additional sorting or costly additives to restore performance. Chemical recycling may someday be the answer to mixed polyolefins, but they won’t ever want the other contaminants either.
What is a reprocessor to do? Faced with inconsistent and contaminated feedstock, they have limited options. They can invest in more advanced sorting and cleaning technologies, which adds cost and requires confidence in long-term demand. They can try to blend or downgrade the material for lower-value applications, which often results in poor performance and weak market interest. Or they can sell the resin as-is at a discount, which undermines profitability and discourages further investment.
The result is predictable: poor or no demand for low-quality recycled resin. And without demand, there’s no incentive to improve the system. But with strong, consistent demand for high-quality material, every link in the chain, from MRFs to brands, has a reason to invest, improve, and collaborate.
Hotels have largely transitioned from individual toiletry bottles to larger, refillable dispensers primarily to reduce costs and waste. While this shift supports sustainability goals, it often comes at the expense of user experience, especially when labeling is unclear or inconsistent. The focus has been on cost efficiency, not necessarily on improving the quality of the experience.
This mirrors a challenge in the recycling industry. For years, the emphasis has been on collecting and processing as much plastic as possible with the lowest possible cost structure. This results in low-cost, low-quality recycled resin. Whatever came in the front door as scrap went out the back door as regrind or pellets with little to no formulation changes. While this material may be suitable for limited applications, it falls short when converters and brands need high-performance, high-purity resin for more demanding uses. Many large reprocessors started this quality transition a few years ago but there are a lot of small operations that continue to run just as they always did. There are even more that have gone out of business, unable to make recycling economics work.
To truly advance circularity, the focus must shift from just quantity to quality. Recycled materials need to be clean, consistent, and engineered for broader applications. And just as hotels are learning that cost-saving measures must still meet guest expectations, the recycling system must evolve to produce materials that meet the performance and regulatory needs of converters and brands. This evolution will come at a cost. More sortation and more cleaning are not free. Demand at an appropriate price is required to drive investment.
Equally important, end users must prioritize applications that can readily incorporate recycled resin, such as secondary and tertiary packaging. These categories offer scalable opportunities to absorb recycled content without compromising product integrity, helping build demand and momentum across the value chain.
- MRFs want better bale prices and consistent sales.
- Reprocessors want higher purity feedstock and long-term buyers.
- Converters want resin that performs like virgin.
- Brands want to meet regulatory and sustainability goals while maintaining profit.
But what they all need is DEMAND; clear, consistent, and growing at a price that covers the added cost and allows some profit. Without it, the system breaks down. With it, the system becomes more efficient, more circular, and more sustainable.