Why you need to watch your waste in an airplane

The scale of inflight catering is astoninshing – but so is its waste problem. Half-eaten meals and tossed beers, empty plastic water bottles and used napkins can be found at the end of any flight.

According to the International Air Transport Association, airlines produced 5.2 million tons of waste last years and will produce over 10 million tons annually by 2030. The problem stems from the sheer scale of the catering process, international health regulations, varying governmental waste policies and space constraints on board. Airlines must plan for food safety, hygiene, freshness and weight, which leads to vast amounts of plastic in every plane cabin, according to CNN.

“Dining in the sky is quite different [than] popping down to your local café,” Mark Ross-Smith, a big data specialist, airline consultant, and founder of Travel Data Daily, told CNN. “Individual wrapping is required to keep food fresh, hygienic and free from contamination. Anyone who has eaten a bread roll on a plane that has been out of wrapping for more than a few minutes can attest to how dry air affects food quality!”

Furthermore, there is a concern about customer satisfaction, which leads airlines to stock more food than required. “Our fear of not serving all passengers results in an increased load, which increases waste,” said Peter Lawrance, head chef of Scandinavian Airlines (SAS). “Airlines are often doing a best guess of how much passengers will buy or consume.”

While flexible catering might not be commonplace now, Ross-Smith said it might help airlines curb waste: “You can pretty much predict anything with data science – from how much a hotel guest would be willing to pay for a suite upgrade and how you spend airline miles. The passenger experience will continue to be the focal point but on a deeper, more granular level. This is the type of stuff airlines can win awards for.” This way, airlines might predict passenger behaviour by tracking passengers’ online data – such as location, income, spending habits and consumption.

However, airlines don’t necessarily have to look all over the Internet to learn what drink you prefer. According to Ross-Smith, by tracking consumption over time, airlines could predict which meal type a person is most likely to order on-board and adjust stock lists. “Based on history of sales and other flight information on specific routes, we are implementing our own developed tool to increase diverse loading instructions to match and predict the passenger needs on every specific route,” Lawrence said.

Another solution might be the pay-as-you-go approach, where travelers order meals before a flight. “One might argue that LCCs [low-cost carriers] are more waste-efficient because they don’t give free things to every passenger, so people only buy what they consume,” Ross-Smith explained. “Pre-ordering of meals also has obvious catering advantages. It lowers costs and weight on board, which translates to lower fuel burn.”

So far, the broadest initiative is the European Union’s “Life + Zero Cabin Waste” plan, that aims for 80% reduction in aircraft waste arriving at Madrid’s Barajas airport by 2020. An airline participant, Spain-based Iberia, has introduced reusable utensils. It plans to introduce recycling bins attached to service trolleys as well. Back on ground, the program has analyzed types of waste arriving at the airport, and redesigned already-existing waste management procedures to be more effective. “There are a number of unique solutions in the market today,” Ross-Smith said. “But they can be difficult to see as a traveler, because catering (and waste disposal) is largely done behind the scenes.”