Each airline has its own approach to food and beverage service. The type of consumables varies, of course, based on the airline itself, what country you’re in, how long your flight is and what class you’re seated in.
Of course, airlines have made multiple changes to their food and beverage service over the years. These include what they offer. The quality of what they offer. Whether or not you have to pay for something better. Even stupid stuff like Delta’s awful napkins (which were eventually changed out for something better).
In these more recent years of environmentality, lots of travel and travel-related companies are looking at ways to be more sustainable.
- Some hotels are eliminating bottled water
- Airlines have figured out all sorts of ways to decrease fuel consumption
- In an effort to decrease emissions, France banned short-haul domestic flights in 2022
- Frontier Airlines claims that checked baggage fees were good for the environment
Some airlines have also changed the type of containers their foods come in, making them more recyclable. Let’s just say that for some of them, bring a Tide pen (oy, the mess!).
To that end, Delta has recently announced its plans to eliminate plastic cups on all its flights. Instead, regardless of what you’ll be drinking – coffee, soft drinks, or alcohol, it will be served in a paper cup.
The airline says it will save 7 million pounds of single-use plastic onboard with the new cups.
From Delta’s Chief Sustainability Officer Amelia DeLuca:
“As an airline, our main goal is to decarbonize our business – a lot of which will come from what we fly, how we fly, and the fuel we use. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t also focus on what we can do right now within our own operation to be more sustainable. These cups are a great example of how Delta is working to address our impact through what we can control today. They’re a highly visible and tangible example for our customers and our people of how Delta is taking our commitment to embed sustainability in everything we do seriously.”
Delta’s goal was to develop a cup that could keep hot drinks hot and cold drinks cold while also being able to withstand the dissolving properties of alcohol. The cups needed to be stackable within the galley carts flight attendants use and be easy to separate so flight attendants would be efficient during beverage service.
“One of the most important things about making long-term, sustainable changes is having the opportunity to test the new solutions and get real feedback from both our employees and our customers,” DeLuca added. “We constantly need to be testing, learning and iterating. That’s what innovating is all about, and innovation is core to Delta’s DNA.”
Delta is in the midst of its final testing of the new cups; they expect to be done with that by this coming spring. Following the trial they’ll go back to the plastic cups for a time, while the new paper cups are being mass produced. Once they are made, they’ll be introduced systemwide.
To be fair, Delta’s first and business class customers have been enjoying their beverages in real glasses (made of glass) all along and will undoubtedly continue to do so.
Feature image: Delta Air Lines
Want to comment on this post? Great! Read this first to help ensure it gets approved.
Want to sponsor a post, write something for Your Mileage May Vary, or put ads on our site? Click here for more info.
Like this post? Please share it! We have plenty more just like it and would love it if you decided to hang around and sign up to get emailed notifications of when we post.
Whether you’ve read our articles before or this is the first time you’re stopping by, we’re really glad you’re here and hope you come back to visit again!
This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
Join our mailing list to receive the latest news and updates from our team.