Flying Above Plastics
Good news!
Recently, Portugese airline Hi Fly announced that it would offer four (count ’em!) flights from Lisbon to Brazil. Seems like pretty standard stuff…planes take off every day Ryan, what’s so special about this news? Oh just that all passengers flying aboard these planes would receive no single-use plastics during the entire flight, that’s all! No plastic straws, no useless plastic cutlery, and no single-use plastic wraps, boxes, or bags. Just your average, every-day sustainable flying story, nothing to see here…move along…
Just kidding. 🙂 This is pretty freakin’ RAD. In addition, Hi Fly has made a commitment to become plastic-free entirely on ALL flights by the end of 2019. That’s next year! No promises of “plastic-free sort of” by 2025. Success story? You can say that again!
“The plastics-free test flight is just the latest move by the Foundation and Hi Fly to make their entire fleet ‘plastics free’ by the end of 2019. The move has already been taken up in the company’s offices. “
Mirpuri Foundation Press Release
Flying
Whether it’s done out of necessity or for fun, the fact of the matter is that flying is now a regular a part of our existence on this planet. CO2-emitting planes, once places of refuge for weary travellers, operate more like flying buses these days, with more and more people getting packed on them every year.
For many people, flying is something that is almost a background activity at this point. We suffer through lineups, security check-points, bad food, and recycled air all to basically zone out during the whole process so that we can “just get there already.” We turn on, tune in, and drop out and voila: we arrive, thankful to escape the prison of coach class. For those flying in business class, it’s a different story and I think if you fly that way, you might actually enjoy the act of flying. Which leads me to my next point…
Waste
If you’ve ever flown, regardless of your position on the plane, you have no doubt encountered waste somewhere. “Back in the day,” flying used to be a bit more of an experience, or at least so I’ve been led to believe by anecdotal evidence and popular shows such as Mad Men and others of its kind. Super reliable sources, right? Still, I think it’s safe to say that at some point in the recent past, air travel was considered something of a luxury, but an experience that average-joe types could also afford. For anyone taking to the skies, a sort of paradise awaited them: ample leg room (say what?!), cocktails served in coach (!!), and dare I say it…real dishware?! Livin’ was easy!
Fast forward 50+ years and here we are, still flying and getting from place to place in hours as opposed to months…but our environmental footprint has grown drastically. Now it’s not just carbon emissions we have to worry about, it’s all the other “stuff” that comes with flying. In-flight beverages are served in single-use plastic cups that don’t get recycled and environmentally aware passengers have to contend with health regulations that prevent their use of reusable water bottles or coffee mugs plane-side.
Perhaps most dreaded of all, though, is the crap-tastic food offered in-flight which has become an over-packaged nightmare. I recently had an experience with a European airline who served their in-flight meals on reusable, plastic trays/dishes with real silverware and honestly, I was practically speechless. I’ve become so accustomed to witnessing ravenous passengers around me rip into bags upon bags of plastic nonsense filled with junk that being given dishes that could be reused and washed felt like a dream!
Some plastic, but not much! 
Real silverware, can you believe it?!
History Repeating?
There are some that took the news of Hi Fly’s plastic-free initiative as a lot of high-falutin’ nonsense, suggesting that “plastic-free flying” is not actually a new thing and may in fact be a trend coming back around on the gui-tar. Still others have mentioned that while this is great and all, we seem to be ignoring the giant elephant in the sky that is the airplane: massive CO2-spewing machines chugging along, burning dinosaur remains every second of every day. EEK. And, more to the point of success and single-use plastics, multiple sources have pointed out that while there are no more plastic items on-board, all of the traditional accoutrements you’d see on a typical flight are still there…they’re just composed of a different kind of disposable product. Is this just subbing one problem for another?
Nevertheless…
Even if this is just a massive PR stunt, I think it’s a good thing. In this day and age, with so much awful, shitty news pervading our every waking moment, leaving us feeling helpless and frustrated, we need news like this. We need it precisely because this kind of news makes a splash and may will make other companies sit up and pay attention already. Already, before this news even broke, multiple airlines had made various kinds of pledges and commitments to reduce their consumption and distribution of single-use plastic items in their lounges and on flights.
“Over 100,000 flights take off each day around the world and, last year, commercial aircraft carried nearly four billion passengers. This number is expected to double again in less than 20 years. So, the potential to make a difference here is clearly enormous.”
Mirpuri Foundation Press Release
There is a shift happening in the realm of plastic pollution and while progress seems painfully slow, it’s there. It’s happening globally, on multiple levels, from grassroots initiatives to big, bold proclamations from large corporations. Each of us can do something to help the problem every time we elect to forego single-use plastics, that much will always be true. But one of the best ways for this situation to right itself in a timely fashion, is with buy-in from big business, the ones that have the power to affect large-scale change. I see what Hi Fly is doing as a huge win, and am totally excited about the precedent they are (hopefully) setting.
