Air NZ's head of sustainability, Lisa Daniell. Photo / Greg Bowker
Air NZ's head of sustainability, Lisa Daniell. Photo / Greg Bowker
Lisa Daniell is at the spearhead of Air New Zealand's war on plastic.
The airline's sustainability head has the ambitious goal of eliminating 24 million separate items of single-use plastic over this current year.
During the past year the airline has removed single-use plastic straws, stir sticks, eye maskwrappers and plastic toothbrushes from lounges and onboard aircraft.
Over a 12-month period this will see the airline reduce its plastic footprint by 260,000 plastic toothbrushes, 3000 straws, 7.1 million stirrers and 260,000 eye mask wrappers.
She says one of the biggest challenges is finding alternatives to plastic that are genuinely biodegradable or recyclable. And they have to be lightweight.
The International Air Transport Association estimated the airline industry generated 5.2 million tonnes of inflight waste in 2016 and Air New Zealand last year launched Project Green, a programme to stop so much being dumped.
It was set up with the airline's catering partner LSG Sky Chefs and the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) to tackle waste from international services arriving in Auckland, with a goal to divert 150 tonnes of waste from landfill annually.
In October the project had seen 40 inflight products, which had previously been sent to landfill due to biosecurity controls, being reclassified so these can be reused on flights in future if they are removed from the aircraft sealed and untouched.
Products approved include sealed beverages and snacks (such as cans of soft drink, packets of cookies, boxes of tea, packets of coffee and sugar sachets). To date the airline had repurposed more than one million of each of the following – plastic cups, sugar sticks, paper cups and paper cup lids.
Daniell says it was highly inefficient to fly a bottle of water around the world and then throw it out because of the rules.
Project Green was saving money by not biosecurity treating the products and then paying landfill charges.
''That is something that hasn't cost us money. It is saving us and there's uplift in terms of staff engagement.''
Daniell spent a decade practicing environmental law before starting at Air New Zealand nearly four years ago.
Her interest in the environment was developed growing up on the shores of Tauranga Harbour and hiking on DOC land with her family while on holiday.
She did a mid-career masters in environment law in the United States at the University of Vermont.
Air NZ, LSG Sky Chefs and MPI have teamed up to tackle inflight waste. Photo / Supplied
Part of the problem
The airline acknowledged that it was a big polluter. It emits more than 3.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year and this increased in the past year by three per cent, due mainly to a five per cent increase in network capacity.
''We are one of the biggest fuel users in the country - we are part of the problem, we need to be part of the solution,'' Daniell says.
Across the industry, airlines are responsible for between 2 per cent and 3 per cent of global emissions.
During the last decade Air New Zealand had made fuel efficiency gains of 21 per cent across its fleet, mainly because of new aircraft but also due to new ways of reducing weight. Using dehumidifiers and regularly replacing insulation material in planes cuts moisture build-up which over the life of a plane can add up to half a tonne.
Saving fuel was part of the ''daily diet'' of staff in different parts of the airline.
Like other airlines, Air New Zealand has dabbled in biofuels but is yet to find a sustainable, long-term option that could be safely used with traditional fuel throughout airport and airline infrastructure.
She said the airline's working with a consortium on what it would take to build a biomass plant using wood waste to generate fuel.
''The commercial case is extremely challenging,'' she says.
Electric aircraft could offer a better option, especially in the regions where smaller aircraft are used.
Right now big aircraft manufacturers were all involved in what is like a ''race to the moon'' to make a plane that can carry enough people far enough to make them economic. These would initially be hybrid planes.
''We think its a big opportunity for us with our regional network and a big opportunity for New Zealand given our high proportion of renewable energy. We have to plan infrastructure to smaller places,'' she says.
Sustainability also extends to procurement. The airline spends about $206 million a year on food and beverages and last year extended an existing partnership with Tairāwhiti, Gisborne and Ngāti Porou.
