Inflight sourcing

As anyone who has ever been on a plane knows, millions of disposable items are used on board every year – stir sticks, napkins, food packaging and cups. In 2015 alone, we used 83 million napkins on our flights. We have an opportunity to make a significant impact by ensuring the products we provide our customers are sustainable. We continually look for ways to procure items that are easy to recycle, reusable or compostable, require less energy or virgin resources to produce, and that are locally or domestically produced to reduce emissions related to transport.

Our goal is to ensure that all inflight service ware items are recyclable, reusable or sustainably sourced. For example, we will be working with Alaskan Brewing Company to serve beer in aluminum cans rather than glass bottles as aluminum is lighter and easily recycled.

2015 snapshot

In 2015, we replaced our polystyrene drink cart coolers with new ones that can be used two to three times as much as the previous coolers. In 2014, we used an average of 380 coolers per month, and the coolers could only be used five to seven times. Our new coolers can be used 10 to 21 times, greatly reducing the number we use – toward the end of 2015 we were averaging only 90 coolers per month.

We also worked to find a compostable alternative for our aluminum first class meal containers, but are still searching for a sustainable replacement that has the same heating properties as our current container. We’re hopeful a new product will be available soon.

We continue to work with our inflight crews to keep unused consumable items like cups and napkins on the plane for reuse instead of returning them to the catering carts, where they end up in a trash bin.

2015 challenges

Finding products that are sustainable and cost-effective is one of our biggest challenges. Balancing sustainable solutions with low-cost, affordable airfare is our priority, and even small increases in cost can make a difference. Sustainable innovation has resulted in new packaging solutions over the past few years, but because the products are still so new, finding adequate and affordable stock can be unpredictable.

Our percentage of sustainably-sourced products actually decreased in 2015 largely due to three changes: we now provide hot towel service on every flight in first class, our usage of the buy-on-board skillet – a non-recyclable item – has increased because we are selling more food, and finding a suitable aluminum meal container replacement is challenging. We hope to find better alternatives and solutions for these challenges in the future.

A look ahead

We’ll continue to work with vendors and inflight crews to identify and source new products, and to overcome the challenges of maintaining reusable items – such as cleaning and storage. We aim to increase the percentage of sustainably-sourced inflight service ware from 76 percent to 82 percent.

We faced challenges in the past with establishing a solid baseline from which to measure progress as sorting, tracking and counting up to 50 different products on various different flights can be difficult. Our goal in the future is to improve our measuring process to better understand how and where we can improve.

Case study

Microgreen was an innovative sustainable packaging start-up that had invented a closed-loop, double- walled cup made from 50 percent recycled-content PETE – an innovation developed in partnership with the University of Washington. This product meant we had a hyper-local, sustainable solution at our doorstep, which we began purchasing in 2014. Unfortunately, the company faced financial challenges in 2015 and has since shut their doors. We believe in and support their vision of creating closed-loop sustainable products for use on our flights, and we hope that this innovative technology will get the support it needs so that it can scale – to meet not just Alaska Airlines’ needs, but to meet industry-wide service needs.