I recently got back from a trip in the South. We took the easy, cheap route and flew Southwest, a no-frills airline that puts its employee’s first. Our flight attendant told us that a week earlier she counted Al Gore among the all-coach passengers. Much has been made by Al Gore’s political enemies of his energy consumption (in the name of environmental awareness), but no one can doubt his thrift.

This got me thinking about how the airline industry could become more green. There were some definite misgivings when Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic flew a plane on biofuel. Changing out jetfuel is a large step, but I think airports and airlines could take some very small steps to improve their environmental record. The TSA has made a lot of cash by picking up coins dropped from the security screening process. How much have they made from recycling all those water bottles they confiscate from folks at the gate?

Here’s a quick idea I drew out for making the refreshments on planes a little more environmentally-friendly, safer, and less staff-intensive. Each seat in the plane would have a magnetic valve projecting from the armrest that would act as a cup holder. A metal-bottomed cup could be passed out by flight attendants and cups would be filled from the bottom with pressurized refreshments stored in the back of the plane. Obviously, the planes would have to be fitted with piping for the drinks, but the system would cut down work for staff and would eliminate the waste of disposable cups, cans, and bottles.

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Tags: airlines, innovation, recycling, refreshments, southwest, travel, TSA, virgin atlantic, waste

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 6:51 pm and is filed under Environment, Sustainability, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.