The airline industry says it’s working hard to clean up its cabins and our skies. But in an industry full of carbon-intensive fuels and machinery, how much of a difference does it really make to switch from plastic to paper cups?
It might sound simple to swap from plastic cups to paper ones, but if you ask Delta, it’s a big ordeal. The international airline announced last month that it was just about finished with testing out a new set of in-flight drinkware that could reduce the weight of its on-board single-use plastic by seven million pounds (just over three million kilos), compared to its 2019 numbers.
Why is it so hard? Mostly because paper cups don’t usually stand up to cold drinks, and alcohol has dissolving properties that mean they can’t use just anything, Delta says. “Additionally, the cups need to be stackable within the galley carts already in use on aircraft, and be able to separate easily so flight attendants can efficiently serve our customers,” the airline said in a press release.
Most paper cups actually have a very thin plastic lining, making them more difficult to recycle, and also still creating single-use plastics. So Delta has also been experimenting with building new cups from scratch to eliminate that extra plastic. The airline didn’t say who’s manufacturing its new drinkware, but revealed that they worked with “sustainability and supply chain experts and production partners to create and manufacture a cup that is uniquely Delta.” These cups will be both compostable and recyclable.
If you’re flying with Delta in the near future, you’ll likely still see plastic cups for the short haul. The airline has been testing the cups on some transcontinental routes, but will return to plastic temporarily while it manufactures enough of the cups at the end of the testing period to put them into full rotation. You can expect to see a full changeover by spring of this year.
Eliminating seven million pounds of plastic sounds like an awful lot, but if you zoom out, it’s ultimately a small piece of the industry’s waste problem. In 2016, passengers produced about 5.7 million tons of cabin waste, much of which is single-use plastic in the form of cups, headsets, wrappers for blankets and pillows, food packaging, and so on. If you convert Delta’s cup savings into the same metric, 3,500 tons of reduced waste sounds an awful lot smaller compared to the bigger issue.
Delta is just one airline though, and others are also working toward reducing their landfill contributions. In early 2023, Alaska Airlines became the first US airline to eliminate plastic cups and water bottles, switching to paper and boxed water, respectively. Alaska Airlines estimated at the time that the move saved them 2.2 million pounds—or 1,100 tons—of plastic waste per year. Again, it’s a relatively small shift compared to the overall problem, but every bit counts. And if every airline eliminated plastic cups, well, then we’d really start to get somewhere.
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Kassondra Cloos
Kassondra Cloos is a travel journalist from Rhode Island now living in London. Her work focuses on slow travel, urban outdoor spaces and human-powered adventure. She has written about kayaking across Scotland, dog sledding in Sweden and road tripping around Mexico. Her latest work appears in The Guardian, Backpacker and Outside, and she is currently section-hiking the 2,795-mile England Coast Path.
