Recycling untouched snacks and beverages pays off for Air New Zealand

A project that allows Air New Zealand to re-use untouched snacks and beverages from international flights has prevented more than 132 tonnes of “waste” being sent to landfill in the first nine months. Air New Zealand received permission form New Zealand authorities in August, 2017, to distribute 40 inflight products from international aircraft landing in Auckland to future flights. The unused products were previously sent to landfill because of New Zealand’s tough biosecurity controls and were burnt or buried. The airline said the figure so far, equivalent to the weight of three of its Airbus A320 aircraft, meant it was confident the program would meet its planned target of saving about 150 tonnes from landfill annually. It said tracking to date showed more than nine million individual items had been recovered for reuse or recycling rather than going to landfill. Read The closely-guarded secrets of Air New Zealand's 'Hangar 22'. Items that had each seen more than one million recovered included plastic cups, sugar sticks, one paper cups and paper cup lids. “We are tracking our progress every month and are confident of hitting our 150-tonne goal in the first 12 months of this project. Air New Zealand head of sustainability Lisa Daniell said. “As an airline, we are extremely committed to sustainability, which is an important issue for our customers and our employees. “ Air New Zealand has a number of initiatives to reduce waste, with a program in place to tackle organic waste from office spaces, repurpose office materials and lounge furniture, and blankets. It also last year began plugging in its jets to gates to provide them with power rather than use on-board auxiliary power units, small jet engines in the tail of the aircraft. It estimates that using electricity from the gate will save about 4500 tonnes annually in carbon emissions. Aircraft are plugged directly into electrical power at gates at both Auckland and Christchurch international airports.