Alaska Airlines has partnered with Boxed Water to replace single-use plastic bottles in First and in the main cabin on its Q400 aircraft.
By replacing plastic bottles with Boxed Water’s 92% plant-based cartons Alaska Airlines hopes to remove 7.2 million plastic bottles from landfills per year.
Earlier this year the airline introduced Boxed Water on Alaska’s Horizon Air operated flights and will expand the programme to all Alaska flights this summer.
Boxed Water is exactly what it suggests: a fully recyclable box-shaped carton of water, sealed with a plant-based cap. Each carton is made from sustainably harvested trees and the multi-filtered water goes through a proprietary eight-step purification – giving it a clean, crisp taste.
Both Boxed Water and Alaska partner with the National Forest Foundation (NFF). Boxed Water has planted 1.2 million trees with the organisation. Alaska also encourages its guests to bring their own refillable water bottle. Each time a guest tags Alaska and #FillBeforeYouFly with a photo of their refillable bottle, the airline plants a tree in partnership with the Bonneville Environmental Foundation to strengthen local habitats.
In 2007, several environmentally-conscious Alaska and Horizon employees formed the “Green Team,” a business resource group dedicated to improving the environment through increased inflight recycling and trash sorting programmes and other environmental initiatives.
“When researching alternatives to plastic water bottles, the Green Team considered a variety of factors on overall environmental impact such as water sourcing, packaging materials, recyclability, and shipping distance,” said Robbie Neff, Green Team member and pricing team lead at Alaska. “Boxed Water scored better than the other options of glass bottles and aluminium cans.”
Traynor-Corey, managing director of guest products for Alaska Airlines, added: “We admire Boxed Water’s leadership to change manufacturing, production, conversation and consumer choice to create a more sustainable and eco-friendly future. We hope that when our guests are enjoying Boxed Water they are interested in learning more about eco-friendly products and, ideally, are inspired to make sustainable choices when they travel and on the ground.”
