How Airlines and Airports Can Clean Up Their Recycling Programs Research Design and Project Coordination

About NRDC The Natural Resources Defense Council is an international nonprofit environmental organization with more than 1.2 million members and online activists. Since 1970, our lawyers, scientists, and other environmental specialists have worked to protect the world's natural resources, public health, and the environment. Acknowledgments The Natural Resources Defense Council would like to acknowledge Jane Woodward and the MAP Fellowship program for its generous support in making this report possible. The author would also like to thank the following people for providing time and expertise to assist with the project: like to thank Peggy Propp and Professor Jane Woodward for their suggestions and guidance. Also thanks to Mark Marchesani for assisting in compiling data, and thanks to Darby Hoover and Allen Hershkowitz for assistance in all aspects of report production. Thank you to the airport and airline officials who completed survey forms. Endnotes 44 Executive Summary The U.S. airline industry discards enough aluminum cans each year to build 58 Boeing 747 airplanes. 1 And aluminum waste is just the tip of the iceberg: The airline industry discarded 9,000 tons of plastic in 2004 and enough newspapers and magazines to fill a football field to a depth of more than 230 feet. Those are the findings of NRDC's yearlong study of how U.S. airports and passenger airlines dispose of waste. The report shows that the airline industry has a dismal record when it comes to grappling with the amount of waste it generates each year. Although airports are responsible for a huge amount of trash—the 10 airports reporting waste generation data in our survey generated 1.28 pounds of waste per passenger in 2004, about one-third of the total amount of waste Americans generate in an entire day—most of the trash discarded at airports is sent to landfills and incinerators. 2 At this rate of waste generation, the 30 largest airports in the United States generate an amount of waste equal to that of a city the size of Miami. 3,4 NRDC's study finds that airport and airline recycling systems are largely underdeveloped, with even the best systems achieving recycling rates lower than the national recycling rate of 31 percent. If airports and airlines recycled as much as the average U.S. recycling rate, enough energy would be saved each year to power 20,000 U.S. households, and carbon emissions would be reduced by an amount equal to removing 80,000 cars from the road …