Founding Partner
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.
We share openly with the inflight services’ industry as a whole scientific guidance and recommendations regarding environmental, societal and governance sustainability issues.
We are a not-for-profit organisation made up of stakeholders and guided by principals from across the inflight services supply chain.
Our Members share their knowledge and resources to identify solutions to complex sustainability problems and champion their adoption by the entire inflight service sector. Our network partners share their knowledge and resources to identify solutions to complex sustainability problems and champion their adoption by the entire inflight service sector.
And actively play a role in identifying best practices, that are good for the planet, people and the future
Incorporate and align your ASF membership in your Corporate Sustainability programs
By ensuring all inflight services passenger experiences are made from a standard set of sustainable resources using ethical methods of manufacture and sourcing.
FROM OUR FOLLOWING PARTNERS
The ASF hosted its first event of 2022 in February. The online event was extremely well attended by over 40 of the world’s leading airlines, caterers, suppliers and industry governing bodies including the ACA, ACI, IFSA and IATA.
Sustainability has been identified as a priority for the aviation industry by leaders in the space. The International Flight Services Association (IFSA) and the Aviation Sustainability Forum (ASF) as aligned stakeholders can bring the aviation sector together to collaborate and develop sector wide inflight solutions that can not only support the march of sustainability within aviation, but provide valuable insights and reputational benefit for both organizations, as well as for the industry at large.
The Aviation Sustainability Forum (ASF) has joined the Advisory Committee for the Global Tourism Plastics Initiative, a programme led by the UNEP and World Tourism Organisation in collaboration with the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, to forge worldwide progress in the area of airline cabin waste.