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inflight sustainability is complex. we have to take it piece by piece

The ASF is a not-for-profit organisation which is driving collaboration to make inflight services more sustainable. Matt Crane explains how...

The Aviation Sustainability Forum (ASF) is best thought of as a 'Collaborative Think Tank'. We bring together stakeholders from across the inflight service supply chain to share knowledge, experience and data to develop standardised end-toend sustainable solutions that can be adopted by the entire sector. Inflight sustainability is complicated, a bit like a Rubik’s cube, and our approach is to take it piece by piece, collaboratively, to find standard solutions for all, one step at a time.

Sustainability has been used as a point of competitive advantage. We need to move away from this and see it as a point of collaborative advantage instead. Together we can come up with enduring solutions for the whole sector.

Compelling case studies in other markets show this approach can be incredibly successful. The aviation sector also has an advantage of rich data on what is loaded – manifests we can use to create relevant agreed standards.

Collaborate now

The first ASF project is about to be published. It studied rotable versus disposable meal service decision- making – when to use which and, if using disposables, which packaging materials to use and standardise.

The ASF respects the confidentiality of its stakeholder partners' data and it is important to be independent, robust and trustworthy. We use a secure data vault accessed by third party research consultants, sustainability experts and IHLs who assist in making the case for sustainable solutions. More than 90 pieces of research and data have been placed in the vault which reflects the trust. In phase two researchers will assess the processes inside stakeholders' businesses to identify the most sustainable options.

Key for aviation sustainability, waste regulations must change to negate the need for incineration or landfill. The ASF takes into account waste legislation so we can support our sector's governing bodies as they push for regulatory change.

Aviation is a significant contributor to the traveller's carbon footprint. It’s vital we have industry-wide collaboration to identify solutions that can be adopted as a standard by us all. If we can do that, prices for sustainable solutions will drop and we can all be confident we are doing the right thing for our industry, our planet and our future. aviationsustainabilityforum.com •