Aviation Seeks More Sustainable Swapouts
Sustainability, reduced environmental impact, a cleaner future for aviation - whatever we call it, treading more lightly on the planet that we live on is a major priority for the airline industry. In many ways, sustainability is becoming the new default for aviation, with new non-fossil fuels, less single-use plastic, recycling, bio-sourcing, circularity, and other elements of the industry’s environmental agenda gaining speed.
Yet there is still much inertia to making changes, and not just because aviation is a massive global industry with many players. Part of that inertia stems from how to compare the sustainability of an item: is this biostarch-sourced plastic that lasts half as long as fossil fuel-sourced plastic more sustainable? How about disposable bowls made of waxed paper, plastic-lined cardboard or bagasse versus a reusable bowl made of fossil fuel plastic? Now, what if that bowl were made from recycled materials?
It can all feel very complicated and adding politics and society into the mix is no help.
Ultrafabrics vice president of brand and marketing Barry Silverman highlights that “even the word — using the term 'sustainability' — is now risky because you're basically setting yourself up for a challenge to a term that may not qualify in certain circles. The fear of greenwashing becomes more and more daunting, given the level of transparency that these brands are forced to live and work. Claims often need to be verified: you must be very careful in the language you use.”
Getting the calculations right is certainly important, and here the initial data suggest that reducing weight in anything carried on board the aircraft is the most effective way to reduce emissions. But all too often, the perfect can be the enemy of the good here: in the search for the most sustainable long-term option, a shorter-term quick win that is better than the status quo might be overlooked.
This happens across the sustainability agenda. Take fuels, for example. Yes, it’s the case that there is a natural limit to the amount of fuel that can be produced from waste cooking oil. Aviation should still embrace it as an early kind of more sustainable aviation fuel, even while waiting for kinds of fuel that are potentially even more sustainable like power-to-liquid.
But at the same time, we should be more precise about language. Are these fuels sustainable in the most rigid definition? There’s certainly an argument there. Does using a phrase like “more sustainable aviation fuels”, highlighting their benefit over petroleum-based fuels, make more sense? Perhaps.
It’s notable that some of the initiatives that aviation is branding as environmental improvements were not necessarily driven initially by environmental thinking. But this is less of a gotcha than one might initially think.
Sure, faster, and wider rollout of meal pre-ordering in premium cabins was in large part driven by the fact that many airlines chose galleys that were smaller in their 787s and A350s than in the generation of aircraft that came before, meaning that the ability to store backup meal choices were substantially reduced. But this isn’t a negative — rather, it highlights that a more sustainable business and a more efficient (and less wasteful business) are not mutually exclusive.
Across the cabin and across its services, the industry has a wide variety of opportunities to make choices — and to encourage passengers to make choices — that come with lower environmental impacts.
To do so, we need to change some mentality: the “yes, and” idea of an imperfect yet better sustainability, rather than the “no, but” model where we wait until it’s too late in the chase of perfection.
