SOLVING THE THROWAWAY PROBLEM OF AVIATION INTERNATIONAL CABIN WASTE

INTERNATIONAL CABIN WASTE PROJECTIONS 2023-2030

44.5 MILLION

Tonnes of ICW burned or buried

$7.1 BILLION

Spent by industry on waste disposal

31 – 76 MILLION

Tonnes of CO2 emitted through waste disposal

8.91 MILLION

Tonnes of this will be untouched food and drink

$30.7 BILLION

Value of untouched food and drink wasted

6 – 15 MILLION

Tonnes of CO2 emitted burning unused product

*Figures based on extrapolation of  IATA’s waste audit 2017

What the ASF do

What we do

We share openly with the inflight services’ industry as a whole scientific guidance and recommendations regarding environmental, societal and governance sustainability issues.

How we do it

Who we are

We are a not-for-profit organisation made up of stakeholders and guided by principals from across the inflight services supply chain.

Who we are

How we do it

Our partners share their knowledge and resources to identify solutions to complex sustainability problems and champion their adoption by the entire inflight service sector.

Welcome to the Aviation sustainability forum

We are a group who collaborates to make recommendations and provide solutions based on relevant research & studies.

 

The statistics for addressing aviation sustainability are compelling and demand immediate and critical evaluation to put in place sustainability standards for our sector. The carbon footprint of our sector is significantly increased through every flight we take – just one return trip to New York generates 1.3 tonnes of carbon (source: Atmosfair) and requires each returning passenger to cycle everywhere for a year, and to go vegan, if they want to successfully offset their carbon contribution from this one return journey.

 

Food waste, packaging, print media, duty free, buy-on-board services and amenities collectively generate over 6,000,000 tonnes of waste a year . By far the majority goes to landfill and incineration due to a waste regulatory framework that is not fit for purpose and needs challenging and change to allow for safe waste recovery and increased circularity (Source: IATA Cabin Waste Handbook 2017).

 

If aviation recovers to the predicted growth pre-pandemic and doubles by 2030 there will be 8.58Bn passengers annually. If our sector does not successfully introduce strategies to reduce the carbon it generates from all its operational activity whilst other industries and transportation go further to meet their respective targets , aviation’s contribution to the total sweep of CO2 emissions could grow from 2% to 25% by 2050. (Source: Grantham Institute of Climate Change @ ASF Conference, Oct. 2019)  

 

Progress is being made in the development of more sustainable aircraft and Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) to ensure this statistic does not become a reality but for too long suppliers, caterers and airlines have developed and used new sustainable Inflight Services solutions to achieve a competitive advantage when positioning alternative products and services to their passengers rather than developing standardised best practices for all. Given the scale of the problem of cabin waste globally and the urgency of the climate change crisis this can no longer be viewed as acceptable practice.

 

As a collective force, the ASF is committed to bringing together companies and organisations from across the inflight services supply chain to collaborate by sharing knowledge and data and commissioning research to develop sustainable solutions and standards that are supported by our industries governing bodies and adopted by the entire aviation sector.

 

This will be a move from COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE to COLLABORATIVE ADVANTAGE for which we seek your engagement and timely assistance to ensure a sustainable future for the global inflight services sector.

Matt Crane

Founding Partner

Join us

BECOME A PART OF THE SUSTAINABILITY DISCUSSION


And actively play a role in identifying best practices, that are good for the planet, people and the future

YOUR MEMBERSHIP AS PART OF YOUR ESG PROGRAM


Incorporate and align your ASF membership in your Corporate Sustainability programs

IMPROVE THE PASSENGER EXPERIENCE, OUR INDUSTRIES REPUTATION AND SAVE RESOURCES


By ensuring all inflight services passenger experiences are made from a standard set of sustainable resources using ethical methods of manufacture and sourcing.

OUR PLEDGE TRACKER

SO FAR RAISED $126,000 FROM OUR $650,000 TARGET

FROM OUR FOLLOWING PARTNERS

ASF NEWSROOM

Taste of Travel

TUESDAY JUNE 6 Taste of Travel Theatre, Hamburg 15.00– 16.00. INNOVATING SUPPLY CHAINS – HOW TO OVERCOME BARRIERS TO EMBRACE CIRCULARITY.

Read More »

Now or Never

Read all about the continuing work of the ASF and the reason why we need the inflight supply chain to come together from our Head of Membership and former Head of Global Supply Chain, British Airways – Karen MacKenzie

Read More »

ASF Project 1 Phase 1 report available for download