Reinventing Hotel Amenities
Andy De Silva's journey is a testament to the power of sustainable thinking and entrepreneurial spirit. Growing up in Sri Lanka, he learned early on about reusing and recycling - a practice that seemed natural in his home country but became startling in contrast to the disposable culture he encountered in the United States. Through Hotel Emporium, De Silva has made it his mission to revolutionize hotel amenities, creating innovative products that dramatically reduce plastic waste and environmental impact.
From developing the Eco Pod - a paper-based product containing powdered toiletries - to launching an innovation lab with seven new products in development, De Silva is proving that sustainability isn't just a buzzword, but a practical approach to business. His work goes beyond simply reducing plastic, diving deep into understanding the full lifecycle of products and seeking creative solutions that can transform entire industries.
Topics Discussed:
De Silva's childhood in Sri Lanka and early sustainability practices
The founding of Hotel Emporium in a garage
California's ban on small plastic toiletry bottles
The Eco Pod innovation
Climate change impacts observed firsthand
Challenges in creating truly sustainable products
The importance of collective action in solving environmental problems
Personal motivations for environmental sustainability
Links:
Episode Transcript:
Andy De Silva (00:00):
During the pandemic, I realized we have to change a lot of things. Not only the sustainable space, how the business world works, because people started working from home and all that stuff. So I started in an innovation lab, right? So I'm inventing probably seven products as we speak. One of them, we are planning to launch in two to three months.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (00:22):
Hello everybody. Welcome to We Are Not Doomed. We bring you interviews with industry experts, entrepreneurs, journalists, and people who are making an impact on climate change every day. I'm Jonah Geil-Neufeld, the executive producer of Puddle Creative. We're a full service podcast and video production company based in Portland, Oregon. Today our guest is Andy De Silva. He's the CEO of Hotel Emporium, which makes eco-friendly hotel amenities, think things like soap and shampoo. He's been with this family business for a long time and has been the driving force in pioneering sustainability, not just within his company, but within the hospitality and hotel industry as a whole. He talks about this business, how it came to be, how he's moving the family business forward by making products more and more eco-friendly, and closing the loop between people using these products and when they end up in the landfill or when they end up being reused. He's got some really interesting products that he's working on and ones that have already come out already that you may have seen in hotels, but you also may not have heard of some of these pioneering ways of delivering these products. If you haven't clicked the follow button on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, I would love for you to do that now. And here's our interview, Andy De Silva, CEO of Hotel Emporium. Welcome to, We Are Not Doomed. Thanks for being on the podcast.
Andy De Silva (01:52):
I'm so glad to be here. Jona, thanks for inviting me to join your podcast.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (01:56):
Well, let's talk a little bit about, you're here to talk about Hotel Emporium and all the work that you guys are doing, but I want to learn just sort of your journey. How did you get into this field?
Andy De Silva (02:08):
So the journey started, right? I was originally born and raised in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka, for most of the people, it's a little island off the coast of India, and so when I grew up, if we buy a bottle of Coke, it was a glass bottle. You always have to give it, drink it, take it to the store, and they'll give you another bottle. So what's the milk? So if you go to a grocery store to buy rice or potatoes or whatever, we carry our own bags and we buy rice, put it in a bag or a bottle. We wash it and bring back. So that's how we grew up with even most of our backyards were gardens. So that's how I grew up. Then my dad pioneered a hotel supplies company in Sri Lanka. He was one of the largest hotel distributors in the produce items in the main city of Colombo.
Andy De Silva (03:01):
So since I was 14, I had to work with him. I didn't have a choice, whether it's after school or on a weekend, I had to go with him to learn the industry. So by the time I was out of school, out of high school, we had a war in Sri Lanka. So education system and the university were close and there was a lot going on. Plus seeing him at a very young age, I realized that's what I want to do. So I wanted to be an entrepreneur. So I tried to work with him full-time right after school. But father and son, I had my own ideas and this little kid who thought knew everything. So I tried it with him for a couple of years, didn't work out. I decided that I had to get out of the country after another year, did a little bit of soul searching, and I ended up in the States and I worked for hotels, and as soon as I came here, worked for hotels and I became a rooms division manager, kind of like the assistant general, managing a couple of hotels and at a very young age.
Andy De Silva (04:02):
And then I realized I'm good at it, but this is not what I want to do. I want to be an entrepreneur in, this was in late nineties, like 99 and so on in early nineties, my uncle who had been here for a long time, he was a hotelier too, but he wanted to be an entrepreneur. He had bought a little amenities in the sense we call all the shampoos and the soaps in the hotel. We call them interim amenities. So he has bought a factory in la, a little factory, and he wanted to be an entrepreneur. So he got all my cousins, aunties, everybody. We have a huge family here working in the factory, but he learned the business, but operationally it didn't run efficiently. So he closed it down around like 95 or so, and then I come here. So him and I, we were brainstorming what we want to do and I want to be an entrepreneur, so to see.
Andy De Silva (04:55):
And then we decided, hey, let's start this journey again. So in my garage we came up with the name Hotel Emporium, and him and I started this journey. So we started selling mattresses at the very beginning. We started selling mattresses to hotels, and then eventually his passion was to, man's passion was to go into toiletries, amenities, and that's how the journey started. So then our business took off. We started this little project in my garage, and then the next thing we are in all over California. Then we moved to Hawaii, all 50 states. Then we went global. So then I see how many little pieces of plastic bottles we go through. So during this journey I thought, Hey, I want to invent something. We just truly sustainable. So for a few years I went to trade shows because the sustainability started, the moment started too, and I went to a couple of packaging trade shows how to, because it's not easy now.
Andy De Silva (05:59):
There's a lot of solutions at that time. So eventually I came up with a product called the Eco Pod, which this is a paper pod. It's made out of recycled paper and all the shampoos condition and the body wash, it's made out of powder. So it's very light. You just add water and you can literally throw it in any landfills. It's paper. So we came with this. During this time, California put a ban on all the little toiletries. This is around 2018, 19 days after 2023, you cannot have many hotels using these little plastic bottles and tubes. So I was already one step ahead because I was already thinking of this journey. So then we came up with refillable systems and bottles, and even most of our products other than the amenities, we do other products as well. Then the pandemic hit. During the pandemic, I realized we have to change a lot of things. Not only the sustainable space, how the business world works, people started working from home and all that stuff. So I started in an innovation lab. So I'm inventing probably seven products as we speak. One of them we are planning to launch in two to three months. So
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (07:14):
For the sustainability lab, are all of those products that you're innovating, does that still have to do with the hotel industry or Some of them are not about the hotel industry.
Andy De Silva (07:25):
I'm innovating right now seven products. Six of them are in the hotel space. The other one is a retail product. Yeah.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (07:32):
Okay, cool. Tell me about the mission of Hotel Emporium. What do you see as the kind of future of these amenity products in hotels, and how do you see that playing into sustainability in general?
Andy De Silva (07:48):
So the hotels have pivoted really fast to the bulk community programs. They sell the larger bottles, refillable bottles. So technically you just have to fill the liquids into them. But the issue in that space, the hygiene factories pretty bad because they're still cleaning solutions in hotels, most of the hotels. So basically you use a little bit, then they refill it. Most of the bottles don't even get washed. And so I see a lot of, especially the female travelers, they take their own cosmetics with them, which doesn't help the whole system. Basically, they're buying the small tube and the bottles in a retail space, and they're taking it. So at the end of the day, environment pack might even be worse because now instead of using what in this hotel, now people are taking, instead of four items, now they're taking eight items. And I know a lot of travelers, some of my staff do it, and I decide to grow my hair.
Andy De Silva (08:49):
Now I'm taking products with me depending on, I know which hotels have the refillable solutions or the other stuff. Now they ban the little plastic bottles at the tubes, but you can still supply the bigger ones. So the difference in plastic savings is about eight to 12%, give or take. Let's assume one ounce bottle versus a 12 ounce bottle. You keep them and you weigh the bottles and see how much plastics. So it kind of defeats the purpose, right? Okay, you're doing 15, 12, 15% better. But can we do more? I think we can do a lot more if you bring the technology into it too. For example, all the pre leaves, which falls, 80% of them, we can use it to create certain products. So that's where I'm going with the whole moment.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (09:37):
How did you start to become somebody who cares about climate change in the environment?
Andy De Silva (09:44):
It began from my childhood. I come from this
Andy De Silva (09:48):
Small third world country, so most of the things were sustainable. So when you come here, you go to the grocery store, you see every day you're buying a plastic bag. I used to take my own plastic bag again and again and again. This is before they started charging. I'm like, why? Then to add to that, I got into a business where we are throwing away plastic bottles. So then I saw everything is coming to in full cycle where the world is going backwards. Everybody's now taking bags to get their product. So I feel like even in the sustainable ways, there's a lot of gaps. People are using a lot of paper products. Even I did for the eco pod, I thought that's a solution, but this is not even a hundred percent solution, because then I realized I really thought about it. Even the paper products, you got to cut a lot of trees to make this paper, so
Andy De Silva (10:47):
It could be as bad as plastic in my space at least. So that's where I'm looking at all the wasted tree leaves and the dust from all the coffee dust to everything when we make rice dust. So I'm doing some unique stuff, which we are planning to bring into the market was in mid to end of next year products made out of those kind of stuff. So I feel like the knowledge I've gotten growing up in a third world country as a really a poor kid, and seeing all those things, it really worked. So I felt kind of responsible because, so millions and millions of little blasting models, I was a part of this thing too. So now I'm trying to do everything to correct it before that. I want it to be kind of my legacy as well.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (11:38):
Yeah. Have you felt in your life that you've been affected by climate change?
Andy De Silva (11:45):
Absolutely. Absolutely. A lot of things, because I traveled a lot. There are places, a beautiful places, man, there were fishing villages along the coast in this Bangladesh too, even in Sri Lanka, certain places, and you go to Venice and you see the ocean rise and places being destroyed. Marine life has been destroyed, and I recently Snor called the Great Barrier Reef, and then they were going, some parts of it is already gone. This is like, I didn't realize how deep it goes to two and a half kilometers. It's the height, right? So when you see those kind of things, not only that, Sri Lank has a lot of wildlife. So one of my uncles, believe it or not, there is a conflict between the farmers and the elephants. We have a lot of elephants in Sho. We've gone into their space and have farmland, and now the elephants come and attack the farmers, and farmers shoot there.
Andy De Silva (12:48):
So sad. Then they come and destroy their houses. So my uncle grows citrus as a border, so farmers cannot cross that line. Elephants has something to do with their smell. They won't go closer to citrus. So I'm seeing all these things. This is nature. It's not only what I'm doing. So even when we pick a charity, we want it to be a true charity, and we want to know if it's really happening because we give a lot to charities. But this year, by December 31st, I told my colleagues too, we have to find, because we cannot do it all, we have to find two charities, one in the us, and I kind of want to do something for Sri Lanka too, because that's where I'm from. Two good charities where we truly make an impact, right? Because you can give money to so many charitable organizations, but I want to make sure the right thing happens.
Andy De Silva (13:45):
So I'm a strong believer of if I can do things right around me that will have an impact. I don't have to go do the whole world, try to capture the whole world. I don't want to go there. We'll start small and let's make an impact. Then we can say what we can do. So that's kind of what I'm doing, and this is where I got it, and that's how I felt. And when I grew up, there was a lot of, we had Black Panthers, a lot of them in Sri Lanka, and we can see them almost extinct going extinct. Black Panthers are kind of part of the regular panthers too. However, a lot of wildlife is getting affected from this. So fishing industry, for example, is a huge issue right now. So anyways,
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (14:29):
Yeah. You mentioned charitable giving donations. Do you do that as a company, as part of your every sale, you make a donation or how does that work?
Andy De Silva (14:44):
No, we don't even look at it like that. Actually. We do a lot of, I personally can say more than 90% of our charitable donations go through the sustainable space one way or another.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (14:59):
But does the business kind of make charitable
Andy De Silva (15:02):
Donations? Does it? I personally do it too, but most of the stuff I do, I don't like to blast it out. Some people like to more than they do show it to the world, Hey, this is what I did. Take a picture. That's not what we do. So we do a lot of good stuff, man. I can probably say.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (15:22):
Cool. So what makes you hopeful for the future? When you think about the work that you're doing and other people that are doing what gets you out of bed in the morning and keeps you positive?
Andy De Silva (15:34):
If you look at our history of the mankind, when the humans put their brains together, I feel like I listened to one of Bill Gates, whether it was a podcast or a TV interview, I cannot remember. He said, if the best brains comes together, you can solve anything. Even this sustainable space we have, all the challenges we are facing. I truly feel like the world is going to come together and figure it out. But everybody has a part to play in this journey, even in whether it's this small or this big, doesn't matter. But eventually, I know for a fact the mankind will figure it out.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (16:16):
Especially after Covid, there was, I feel like there was a time during Covid when we just all overnight started doing things differently. And that's kind of a good lesson of people coming together really quickly and changing their ways.
Andy De Silva (16:34):
Yeah, people can change. It taught us when people say We cannot change, we all change. Yeah,
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (16:41):
Definitely. Well, Andy, thank you so much for being on the podcast. Is there anything that I haven't asked you about that you wanted to discuss?
Andy De Silva (16:49):
No, I think you've asked pretty much everything I expected, so this is great, man. Appreciate it.
Jonah Geil-Neufeld (17:00):
Thanks so much for listening to We Are Not Doomed. And thanks to Andy for being on the podcast. You can go to hotelemporium.com to learn more about his business and to listen to more episodes. Go to We Are Not doomed.com. We have all the show notes, links and transcripts on that site as well. Until next time, I'm Jonah Geil-Neufeld. Have a great week.