Airports Make It Hard for Airlines to Recycle

  • Many airports don't offer airlines recycling, so all those soda cans and other recyclables are going into landfills.

A new report finds most airlines throw away their empty soda cans and other
recyclables. Mark Brush has more:

Transcript

A new report finds most airlines throw away their empty soda cans and other
recyclables.
Mark Brush has more:

The environmental group, the Natural Resources Defense Council, surveyed around 30
airports and airlines about recycling. They found that most don’t do it. The group
estimates the airline industry trashes about 80% of the materials it
uses.

Allen Hershkowitz is with the NRDC. He says that they found the airports with the
best
recycling programs also save the most money:

“In some cases over six figures annually were saved were save by those airports that
had
the highest recycling rates. So really, in this particular case, economic cost
cutting and
ecological intelligence work in a mutually reinforcing way.”

Hershkowitz says airlines are often at the mercy of the airports they fly into. If
there’s no
recycling program in place they have a difficult time sorting out all their used
paper, cans
and bottles.


For the Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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