Prohibits hotels from providing guests with personal care products in single-use plastic containers under certain circumstances.
Summary
Assembly Bill 4965 would phase in a statewide prohibition on hotels providing guests with personal care products in single-use plastic containers. Beginning six months after the bill’s effective date, hotels with 50 rooms or more could no longer place these items in guest sleeping rooms or shared guest/public bathrooms, and after 12 months the restriction would apply to all hotels. Hotels could still provide such products if a guest expressly requests them, but only outside the restricted guest-room and bathroom areas.
The bill defines the covered establishments and products broadly, including hotels subject to the Hotel Occupancy Tax Act and plastic bottles, tubes, sachets, or similar containers under six ounces that are not intended to be reused. It also creates an enforcement scheme: a first violation results in a warning, while second and subsequent violations can trigger civil penalties of up to $1,500 per offense, enforced through summary proceedings in Superior or municipal court. Hotels may keep an inventory of these items on-site for request-based distribution without penalty.
Impact
The bill would add a new environmental and consumer-product restriction to Title 13 of the Revised Statutes, effectively banning routine hotel distribution of single-use plastic toiletry containers and shifting hotels toward refillable, bulk, or request-only dispensing models. It would affect hotel operators statewide, with an earlier compliance date for larger hotels, and would authorize municipal and state enforcement through civil penalties. The bill also expressly preempts local regulation in this area, preventing counties and municipalities from adopting new rules and superseding existing local ordinances on hotel toiletry plastics.
Sentiment
No committee transcripts or recorded votes were provided, so there is no documented legislative debate or roll-call sentiment to assess. Based on the bill text alone, the measure appears to reflect a policy preference for reducing single-use plastic waste in the hospitality sector while preserving guest access to toiletries upon request. The phased implementation suggests an attempt to balance environmental goals with operational adjustment time for hotels.
Contention
The main potential points of contention are likely to be the cost and logistics of compliance for hotels, especially smaller properties that must convert within a year, and the bill’s preemption of local authority, which removes municipal and county flexibility to regulate hotel toiletry packaging differently. Another possible issue is the scope of the ban, which covers not only guest rooms but also shared bathrooms and public areas, though it does allow request-based distribution. No specific opposing or supporting arguments were recorded in the provided materials.