Timeline for How do I minimise waste on a flight?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
18 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 23, 2019 at 21:49 | comment | added | smci | If the airlines (and airport cafes and restaurants) agreed to use the same containers, that would reduce costs greatly. Has there ever been any movement towards that? (as there has been in Europe, with zero-waste and no-packaging supermarkets). | |
| May 7, 2019 at 20:12 | comment | added | JJJ | @Chronocidal most flights will probably just pack a certain number of each type of meal (on long-haul), possibly depending on how many passengers booked (unlikely though, as you might be able to sell more tickets last minute). If you can add a special meal up to hours before the flight departs, I doubt that they're going through the trouble of taking meals out / order fewer based on that. | |
| May 7, 2019 at 9:42 | comment | added | Chronocidal | @JanKyuPeblik If you want to make that distinction, then you should make it when you book - most flights with a meal have an option to specify "dietary requirements", so that is the correct place to specify that you do not want/require a meal. Then it is never cooked, and never packaged. Otherwise, you are not reducing your Environmental Impact, you are just trying to (incorrectly) claim that it is someone else's impact. The environment doesn't care who throws the packaging away, just that it was thrown away. | |
| May 7, 2019 at 4:48 | comment | added | Jan Kyu Peblik | @Nelson You are wrong, as previously stated. If you say "Sorry, I don't want this meal because ${reasons}, only fools would ignore their employees reporting back such a response and wasted food." Granted, there are lots of fools out there, and it might take some time, but it'd still work. Even idiots understand pointlessness eventually. | |
| May 7, 2019 at 2:59 | comment | added | Nelson | @JanKyuPeblik Refusing the meal gives zero encouragement to the company. You already paid for it! Whether you eat it or they throw it out, they don't care either way. | |
| May 6, 2019 at 23:36 | comment | added | Fattie | Sure, it's a well-known result that certain disposable paper/etc plates are much better for the environment than running a dishwasher on china plates. | |
| May 6, 2019 at 17:10 | comment | added | Jan Kyu Peblik | Some of these comments are truly naive. There is so much more involved in making plastic garbage than what reusable alternatives would replace in a single flight. With a reusable system in place you could replace the mode of transportation or fuel at any moment and be golden. And refusing something that is poorly implemented, even if it would create short term utter waste, can encourage an organization to reduce that problem long term. You must consider the wider implications. You must think longer term. | |
| May 6, 2019 at 13:46 | comment | added | Hilmar | This may actually be worse than taking the meal. Meals get prepared based on passenger count (plus some safety margin) and whatever doesn't get eaten will be throw out: you can't refreeze it. If you eat the meal there is still a small chance that the waste gets separated and recycled, if you it's get thrown out entirely it is guaranteed to go in the landfill trash. | |
| May 6, 2019 at 12:04 | comment | added | MJeffryes | @jwenting It's not propaganda to say that single use plastic has unaccounted for externalities. While glass cleaning and collection can be accomplished with renewable energy sources, plastic use on the other hand will always lead to the build up of microplastics in the environment. I think we're getting off track here though: My main point was that a financial analysis of the alternatives won't encompass the problems that are being discussed in the question. Of course plastic is cheaper, but it comes at a cost to the environment, because it basically lasts forever. | |
| May 6, 2019 at 12:02 | comment | added | RedSonja | "refuse the food package" They carry the right number of everything for the number of passengers, so anything you don't use gets thrown out anyway. | |
| May 6, 2019 at 11:20 | comment | added | jwenting | @MJeffryes the study took the total cost/pollution into account, including disposal into landfills or incinerators. It was specifically designed that way, contrary to propaganda at the time from environmentalists that only looked at the disposal of cartons and failed to take into account the collection and cleaning of glass bottles (no plastic bottles at the time) | |
| May 6, 2019 at 10:54 | comment | added | Stian | @Redbaron No, burning PE plastics will not create any noxious gases. Most single use plastic is made of PE or PPE. | |
| May 6, 2019 at 10:19 | comment | added | RedBaron | @StianYttervik Plastic incineration releases some noxious gases which harm not just environment but human health too. This is why most western nations usually ships it off to China (before the import ban) or other east asian countries for incineration. If you don't burn it, it ends up in oceans where it is sits in great patches and damages marine ecology. | |
| May 6, 2019 at 9:50 | comment | added | Stian | @MJeffryes plastic is not necessary to recycle - you can incinerate it and regain the energy value. Most of the value/cost in plastic is tied to the opportunity cost of just burning the oil that produced it. You are back on zero as long as you capture the heat when you incinerate it. | |
| May 6, 2019 at 9:44 | comment | added | Sorin Postelnicu | Exactly, MJeffryes is right about the externalities. Currently the cost of shipping in new cartons is smaller than the cost of returning and refilling because the industry is under no obligation to pay for clearing-out the waste created by their packaging. If all governments everywhere would mandate that it's the producer's responsibility to clear the waste, then the cost of return and reuse would be lower for the producer than the cost of paying for new cartons and collecting them and recycling them. | |
| May 6, 2019 at 9:14 | comment | added | MJeffryes | The financial cost of cartons also was going to be quite a bit lower because of the cost of returning bottles to the factories for cleaning and refilling Yes, of course, we know that single use plastics are cheaper, that's why they are widely in use. The problem is the externalities, namely that plastic is more difficult to recycle and extremely slow to degrade. | |
| May 6, 2019 at 6:45 | comment | added | badjohn | This is an important point. If you replace the disposable items with heavier reusable ones then you may waste more fuel instead and harm the environment even more. I have also seen studies that if you are going to transport drinks a long way then disposable plastic consumes fewer resources than reusable glass because it is so much lighter. The answer in that case is to buy locally made drinks in reusable bottles. | |
| May 6, 2019 at 6:30 | history | answered | jwenting | CC BY-SA 4.0 |