Many of us have thought this, every time the trays with leftover food, the intact pack of butter, the bread, the plastic tub with the unopened fruit salad are piled up on the plane. Where does all this food go?
A few weeks ago Alessandro Bassanini, commercial for an Italian company, after seeing photos of food wasted on planes posted on social media about Geneva airport, decided to start a petition on change.org Italy, which focuses precisely on waste: and asks airlines in France, Italy, Spain, Russia, the United Kingdom, Thailand and Germany to adopt responsible policies to reduce food waste on their flights. The result? The petition has already raised more than 120,000 signatures from 7 countries.
«While travel resumes after the years of the pandemic», writes Bassanini in his petition, «many airlines are rethinking the spaces and services to offer, and beyond. These actions should be accompanied by the correct use and reuse of food. Some catering and aircraft cleaning workers at international airports denounce the enormous waste of packaged and absolutely intact food. Humanity is facing epochal challenges (wars, famines, inequalities, etc.) that we can only defeat with concrete actions in everyday life”.
“Even a ‘simple’ flight – continues Bassanini – has a negative impact on the environment if managed in the way it has been done up to now: without any attention to food waste”. And proposes: “Involving the realities of the territories bordering the airports, institutions and voluntary associations is essential to avoid unnecessary costs for the entire community”.
Yet, despite the good intentions of the petitioner, things are not that simple: ready-to-eat meals need a very particular treatment of the food to be donated, and furthermore, there is an additional difficulty for food prepared outside the European community, for example. Certainly, however, a petition of this kind tells us that attention to the sustainability of flights, in every field, has ever greater importance for the consumer (and traveler) and indicates to the airlines to pay increasing attention to the issue: choice and advance booking of your meal so as to prepare an adequate quantity for your needs, sustainable and recyclable packaging, elimination of single-use plastic these are roads already followed and increasingly explored by airlines. Scandinavian Airlines, for example, has set itself the goal of using only sustainable materials by 2030 (in addition to the goal of flying only with green fuels). On a large scale, even a small action can have great results: already in 2018 American Airlines it had introduced biodegradable and eco-sustainable spoons and straws on board aircraft and in lounges, eliminating plastic ones. Thanks to these changes, American has eliminated the consumption of more than 32,200 pounds of plastic each year.\
Source: Vanity Fair
I’m Susan Karen, a professional writer and editor at World Stock Market. I specialize in Entertainment news, writing stories that keep readers informed on all the latest developments in the industry. With over five years of experience in creating engaging content and copywriting for various media outlets, I have grown to become an invaluable asset to any team.
