Living Plastic-free: Airplane Food
I was 35,000 feet above sea level. The flight attendant was wheeling the ‘onboard café’ down the aisle and I was starving. She might as well have been peddling crack cocaine. ‘Cuz this woman was dealing in plastic. And I’ve gone plastic-cold-turkey in 2007.
The little pretzels, the cookies, the sandwiches, even the water. All packaged in plastic. The pizza was a maybe, but I wasn’t going to chance it. If I went all trippy and succumbed to its ‘potential no-plastic’ lure and then discovered it indeed had plastic inside that cardboard box – well I’d fall off my no-plastic bandwagon and have to go into rehab.
Fortunately I had come prepared. Or so I thought. I had packed my own nibblies and a can of Dr. Pepper to keep the in-flight munchies at bay.
The Dr. Pepper proved to be a tactical mistake. Metal+Liquid=Confiscated by Security. Yup, there was a cola intervention. SecurityGuy was nice enough to compromise…‘You can drink it now, or throw it away’. EnviroWoman doesn’t like to waste the earth’s resources, so I guzzle-mainlined it so I could to still make my flight.
That also proved to be a tactical mistake. The flight was 5 hours long. Too long for even EnviroWoman’s patient bladder.
It was a bad-karma day, alrighty. Or perhaps my etch-a-sketch wasn’t operating with all its knobs. Because although I had embodied the boy-scout ‘be prepared’ rule when it came to food, I had totally brain-farted on the toiletries issue. It was during the cab ride to the airport when it drifted into my frontal lobe that I had not brought shampoo, conditioner, or soap. I always use what the hotel supplies. Alas…hotels usually package these wee essentials in the evil plastic.
Not good. Not good at all. Cleanliness is next to godliness. And it’s so not good to upset my morning ritual. Especially when travelling. When I do, it kinda feels like I'm camping. My eyes feel all puffy and weepy. My hair feels all dishevelled and bedeviled. And the day…the day just goes off-kilter.
Who knew you’d have to ‘rough it’ at the Hilton Hotel. (and I won't even talk about the mini-bar)
Okay – this is totally off topic. Well kinda. I had never noticed this before - but the airline I was on appeared to have no recycling program onboard. 200 people locked in a plane for 5 hours, and all that trash they generate (which, whoa! was a lot!) gets chucked out. Why don’t airlines have inflight recycling programs?
Lessons learned:
- Dib Dib Dib. Always Be Prepared if you want to get your No-Plastic Badge
- Having numerous diplomas hanging on the wall doesn’t preclude people from doing something Dr. Pepper-stupid.
Comments
You my friend, are awesome.
You my friend, are awesome. Excellent idea to post to Air Canada's site! I'll follow your lead and post the same question at West Jet.
Please keep us all posted (me especially) on what you find out.
Rob, may the chocolate gods be good to you.
EnviroWoman
Plastic free. Cruelty Free. Vegetarian. Chocoholic
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WestJet Responds Here is
WestJet Responds
Here is WestJet's response to EnviroWoman's question "Do you have onboard recycling?"
WestJet recycles when we can. We just don’t have enough room to recycle everything onboard the aircraft. The galley space is very limited and that’s why we cannot recycle plastics at this time.
Having said this, we have two recycling containers onboard most aircraft and they are full of cans, cardboard and newspapers.
I have shared your e-mail with our In-flight Manager team for their information.
Thank you for choosing WestJet.
Plastic free. Cruelty Free. Vegetarian. Chocoholic
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Nicely done, EW... and good
Nicely done, EW... and good on WestJet for answering so quickly. (I'm guessing your answer to para 1 is "So don't use plastics.") The due date on Air Canada's reply is Monday.
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Monday has come and gone
Monday has come and gone with no sign of Air Canada...
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Any news from them at all?
Any news from them at all?
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Nope. Not even the rustling
Nope. Not even the rustling of a discarded cracker wrapper...
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I just wanted to respond to
I just wanted to respond to the non recycling bad news on International flights entering Canada.
Canada Border Services Agency has a program in place whereby all international trash, including arriving planes (yes even WestJet) in the international bagge hall up until the public concourse (all international travellers, Customs, Immigration). All of this trash collected is incinerated. This program is in place because of the potentially harmful pests and diseases that come from foreign sources.
For example in the 1950's a piece of sausage entered Canada and was taken to a farm, the sausage was carrying a major disease that cost Canada 30 billion and wiped out farms in a 200 km radius.
Fines are imposed of $200 each prohibited item that is not declared, to discourage the importation of foreign foods.
I hope this helps.
You can find out more on the program at www.cbsa.gc.ca
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Air North, Yukon's Airline,
Air North, Yukon's Airline, has an inflight recycling program. They donate anything made on recycling to local charities. They do have a ways to go to reduce the amount of plastic in thier inflight meals, but they have started.
If Air North can do it, there is no reason, other than money, that Air Canada, West Jet and the rest, can't do it.
Lets keep it green, keep it clean.
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Great post, EW - and a
Great post, EW - and a really good question about airline recycling policies.
I've just posted that question to Air Canada via their web site:
We'll see what happens. (Many bonus points await them if they respond in the comments thread!)