Out of all the sexy amenities in my luxurious bathroom at Acapulco’s Banyan Tree Cabo Marques, the one that caused me to shriek with excitement was the trio of shampoo, conditioner and bath gel in the shower.  My partner Chef came running, convinced I had been attacked by a coati, or aardvark, that we’d seen poking around outside our suite.  Instead, he found me snapping iPhone pics of bath products.  It wasn’t the liquid gel itself that got me going—it was the sophisticated packaging of the product into elegant clay jars.

Sounds crazy, but bare with me for a moment.  You see, the travel industry has a dirty little secret that it can’t seem to solve on a large scale.  As discussed on the panel I moderated at last year’s Condé Nast Traveler World Savers Congress, those mini-bottles of shampoo may be trendy and cute, but they’re devastating to the environment.

Consider that each day in North America it’s estimated nearly 2 million bars of soap and bottled amenities are discarded as trash.  That’s about 358 tons of soap and plastic bottles sent to local landfills on a daily basis.  Some individual properties like The New York Palace Hotel and Fairmont Chateau Lake Louise have partnered with the non-profit Clean The World to reuse amenities in third world countries where proper hygiene can save a life.  But no large chain has made much progress tackling the root cause of the issue—doing away with mini-bottles and adopting reusable containers.

Excuses for the delay abound.  Some say there’s a safety issue—what if someone poured bleach in reusable containers and turned the next guest blonde?  Others claim there’s a labor problem—requiring maids to carry around heavy refills can cause health and training issues.  Still some argue that guests won’t like the alternative—refillable dispensers seem downscale.

All of those arguments have been overcome by independent properties like Melbourne’s Alto Hotel on Bourke, and small chains like Costa Rica’s Cayuga Sustainable Hospitality—both of them winners of a Condé Nast Traveler World Savers Award for their efforts.  But the big guys like the Hyatts and the Hiltons say that it’s not only complicated to scale up efforts that have been piloted by the little players, but that their solutions don’t feel luxury enough for their guests.

And that’s why I was doing a little jig in my Banyan Tree bathroom.  An upscale chain was tackling the issue head on, removing the detrimental mini-bottles with no apologies to the guest.  They even built a perfect little niche in the shower to hold the glazed pottery jars.

For years, my mother-in-law insisted I bring back all the amenity bottles I could carry from my overseas trips because she uses them in the guest rooms at the family’s country house outside Mexico City.  Although I considered them contraband, I certainly wasn’t going to incite a fight with her.  Now, I had an excuse for not showing up with the required welcome gift—I couldn’t throw the jars into my luggage.  But later, perusing the hotel gift shop, I stood staring at an entire wall of the bath product jars in various colors, all branded Banyan Tree, with prices expected of a luxury chain.  I smiled and had to hand it to the company—they turned the entire controversy into revenue earning potential.

By the way, my mother-in-law was thrilled with the gift of the Banyan Tree reusable containers.  She’s expecting to see many more from other luxury properties.  As am I.