Every day, Emirates’ airline catering facility聽prepares 180,000 meals聽to service its more than 400 daily flights around the globe. The Emirates facility is one of the world’s biggest airline food factories, but there are similar operations across the world.
The scale of inflight catering is astonishing — as is its waste problem. Half-eaten meals, tossed beers, empty plastic water bottles, napkins, discarded packaging — look around a cabin at the end of any flight and you can get a sense of the waste on a small scale.
And the big picture? According to the International Air Transport Association, airlines produced聽5.2 million tons of waste last year, and will produce over 10 million tons annually by 2030.
While the statistic includes a host of disposable products — from wine bottles to plastic toothbrushes — a large chunk is directly related to food service. From harnessing behavioral data and using cups that can be composted to donating nonperishable food items and on-board recycling, here’s what airlines are doing to divert cabin waste from landfills.
What’s the Problem?
The problem is compounded by various factors: 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 — hence the vast amounts of plastic in every plane cabin. “Dining in the sky is quite different [than] popping down to your local caf茅,” Mark Ross-Smith, a big data specialist, airline consultant, and founder of Travel Data Daily, tells CNN Travel. “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!”
There’s also a concern about customer satisfaction, which leads airlines to stock more food than required on board flights. “Our fear of not serving all passengers results in an increased load, which increases waste,” says Peter Lawrance, head chef of Scandinavian Airlines (SAS). “Airlines are often doing a best guess of how much passengers will buy or consume.”
A finely tuned computer system which can customize catering to changing needs is not yet standard, he adds.
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