Alaska Airlines’ sister carrier, Horizon Air, has completed its first feasibility tests of collecting cabin waste plastics for environmentally friendly disposal instead of sending them to landfill.
The airline teamed up with Ridwell, a Seattle-based company that aims to help reduce landfill waste by offering reusable bags that can be filled with waste and then collected for recycling or reuse. The waste plastics are used to create products such as building materials and leach-free stormwater drainage materials.
The test was small in scale, but showed the potential of a wider rollout, with 28 Ridwell bags used on 70 Horizon Air regional test flights. Those bags were filled with plastic waste such as snack wrappers and, according to the airline, 17.1 lbs (7.76kg) of films and multi-layer plastics were collected during the test flights and then responsibly recycled by local and sustainable partners in the Pacific Northwest region.
“I first-hand see all the waste that comes from inflight service (although we’ve gotten a lot better) and I’d love to see us continue to improve on this,” said ‘Zoie B’. a Horizon Air flight attendant and member of Alaska Airlines’ Green Team business resource group, who participated in the trial. “We discarded wrappers mainly into the Ridwell bags – pretzel and Biscoff wrappers, and other wrappers we collected from passengers. It was a great feeling to know that these items were not going to landfill.”
Scott Coughlan, Alaska Airlines’ environmental sustainability programme manager, added, “Through our partnership with Ridwell, Alaska Airlines is pioneering innovative solutions to reduce plastic waste from our inflight service, focusing on materials that are often not accepted by local recycling facilities. This initiative aligns with our broader sustainability goals to minimise waste and promote more eco-friendly practices across all aspects of our operations.”
