Airlines and caterers are becoming more aware and more conscious of waste than they were. We’ve been talking about it for four to five years. There are now more questions about it – asking about the quantities and the composition. There’s more interest, in general, in waste and sustainability.
The Aviation Sustainability Forum has a programme of audits. It’s called the CWCA [Cabin Waste Composition Audit], which we do in conjunction with IATA [the International Air Transport Association].
We audit the waste that comes off a plane. So we take a representative sample of flights for an airline and undertake the audits in the catering unit.
Analysing onboard waste
We look at everything that comes off the flight – catering and cleaning waste. We measure it, we weigh it by location and by source, and we also look at the composition – for example, plastic or paper.
We put that data into a dashboard and report back to the airline on their data composition and also against the benchmarks of the anonymised data that we have in the dashboard.
We can then tell them where they should be looking at some of their concerns and what that means.
We consult with the airline to begin with, to get their flight patterns. We then suggest what kind of flights they should be choosing by geography, by night and day, and by length of flight. We pick between 10 and 20 flights to audit.
Once we have the data back from that – it’s weight and composition – we give them the data and a data presentation. They can share that internally with their stakeholders.
Data drives conversations
That’s when the data starts to drive the conversations. Without the data, it’s just an opinion. When you have the data, people look at it and review it.
We then go back with insights on a waste reduction programme. That’s where we think they should be looking, where we’d advise them to be looking and what they should be doing about it.
We’re in collaboration with David Hailey at Countifi. He comes in with his AI equipment and data feeds. On the basis of the insights and the data that we have found – and the conversations with the airlines on what they want to reduce or recycle – he can monitor by scale, every day and every flight. That’s what’s coming in and what’s changing over a period of time.
That’s a scale operation within the caterer as well. That goes into the same dashboard. So it’s an end-to-end solution, from what your waste is at a particular moment in time to how you are reducing that to meet your goals over time.
On sealed food and beverage that can be done within six months to a year. I think that on recycling, depending on the legislation and the regulations within that market, it would take slightly longer.
We now have quite solid data but it is going to be a long-term thing. I know that some airlines are talking to the EU about back-to-back catering. So if nothing comes off the airline when it lands, and it comes straight back, how is that considered?
Incineration or landfill
We’re looking at waste segregation onboard. But if the waste touches food in any way, then it still has to be incinerated or go to landfill.
Passenger numbers from 2024 to 2025 are have grown by over 10%. So waste will have increased by 10% if we don’t do anything. We have to act now. Now is the time to do something about it.
I think for the airlines it is complex, because there are multiple stakeholders in their business. It’s about finding the owner of the sustainability issue and the cost savings issue within airlines.
Data helps us to do that, because we can get to the right stakeholders.
