Delta Eliminates 7m Pound Single-Use Plastics Onboard

Delta Air Lines, after two years of prototyping and testing, replaced single-use plastic cups with recyclable paper ones on transcontinental flights by the end of last year.

From there, the airline will transition domestic US journeys in 2025. It is an exercise that will decrease the plastic Delta sends to landfills.

It won’t have a tangible impact on decarbonisation. Jet fuel accounts for 90 per cent of the airline’s greenhouse gas emissions.

Alaska Airlines was the first to make this move finishing the project in August 2023. That transition eliminated 55 million single-use plastic cups annually or about 2.2 million pounds of plastic waste.

Delta’s cup redesign will cut seven million pounds of plastic annually, or the weight of about 1,300 pickup trucks. That’s on top of the 4.9 million pounds of single-use plastics it has saved since 2022.

The airline declined to reveal how many cups it will replace, but a spokesperson said it serves 200 million customers annually. Delta already eliminated most plastic water bottles and other items from its flights.

Changing to one universal, 10.5-ounce drink cups to serve cold, hot and alcoholic beverages — instead of using both plastic ones and paper ones in flight — is a sustainability measure that also appeals to consumers frustrated by singleuse plastic waste, said Amelia DeLuca, chief sustainability officer at Delta.

Aviation accounted for about e per cent of the world’s carbon footprint in 2022, and the biggest culprit was jet fuel. Delta is investing in sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) made from renewable sources such as agricultural waste, cooking oil and animal fat.

Its goal is to substitute at least 10 per cent of its annual fuel consumption with SAF by 2030, and as of April, it had signed contracts covering about half that volume. While SAF will be important, it currently isn’t in abundant supply.

Technology improvements to make planes lighter, updates in energy efficiency, and optimisations for flight, ground and traffic management will be critical for driving “small but material” reductions until at least 2040, according to an aviation industry analyst by consulting firm Oliver Wyman.

With that in mind, Delta is prioritising ways to cut how much jet fuel it burns. In 2022 alone, it introduced measures such as enhanced winglets to reduce drag that cut 10 million gallons of fuel.

Delta is on pace to cut 1 billion gallons of fuel cumulatively between 2019 and 2035, about one-quarter of what it uses annually. Delta considered multiple suppliers while planning how to ditch single-use plastic.

The airline evaluated potential partners for pricing and specific supply chain considerations, including financial strength and risks such as geography and allocation.

Delta’s design and sustainability teams even visited facto – ries where potential suppliers would produce the paper cups.

It ultimately decided on a new one, Blulabs, during the final prototyping and testing phase in early 2024. Blulabs is a private, family-owned company with annual revenue in the low nine figures that boasts customers in aviation, food service and retail; Walmart and Disney are accounts.

Specialised material is needed to hold hot and cold drinks, including alcoholic beverages, which can dissolve paper.

Traditional paper cups come with a polyethene liner, but that makes them difficult to recycle. Delta sought recyclable cups that are also home and industrial compostable, so they comply with European standards.