Qantas vows to remove or replace more than 100 million single-use plastic items by the end of 2020
The first-ever commercial flight to produce no landfill waste touched down successfully in Adelaide yesterday.
Qantas, the Australian airline running the flight, used the mileston to launch its plan to eliminate 100 million single-use plastic items by the end of 2020, and reduce the airline's total waste by 75 per cent by the end of 2021.
All in-flight products on board the QF739 flight from Sydney to Adelaide yesterday will be disposed of via compost, reuse or recycling, the airline said. Around 1,000 single-use plastic items were substituted or removed altogether; meal containers were made from sugar cane and cutlery from crop starch, while customers used digital boarding passes and electronic bag tags.
The journey would usually produce 34kgs of waste, totalling 150 tonnes annually on the Sydney to Adelaide route alone, the airline added.
As part of its mission to cut single-use plastics from its flights in the long-term, Qantas and its low-cost subsidiary Jetstar announced plans to replace 45 million plastic cups, 30 million cutlery sets, 21 million coffee cups and four million headrest covers with more sustainable alternatives.
"In the process of carrying over 50 million people every year, Qantas and Jetstar currently produce an amount of waste equivalent to 80 fully-laden Boeing 747 jumbo jets," said Qantas' domestic CEO Andrew David, shortly before flight QF739 took off. "This flight is about testing our products, refining the waste process and getting feedback from our customers."
Last year, Qantas operated the first biofuel flight between Australia and the United States using biofuel processed from mustard seed.