Airport Experience® News - Pre-Conference Issue 2025

Left: Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport has a ban on non compostable, single-use serveware. In addition to complying with this ban, concessionaires are also asked to comply with the airport’s sustainable purchasing policy, including buying products that are more sustainable and from green-certified manufacturers and sellers, among other sustainable practices.

Looking to the future, it’s clear that concessions-related waste reduction programs will become the norm as airports continue to push toward a zero waste future. “The San Diego County Regional Airport Authority will continue to grow the SAN Green Concessions program to achieve 100 percent participation from all concessions,” Morreale says. “With the opening of the new Terminal 1, there will be more opportunities to engage with new concessions and to accomplish our environmental goals. “In pursuit of 100-percent certification, more sustainable initiatives will be implemented that lead to energy and water savings, waste reduction, and more awareness for employees and passengers on the environmentally friendly initiatives at SAN,” Morreale continues. “We want to partner with concessionaires to develop new sustainable goals and make the airport a leader in this space.” Cooke notes that the future of SFO’s Green Business Program is bright, particularly as the airport further decarbonizes and rolls out new initiatives. “We have over 200 local businesses eligible for the program that can meet their corporate sustainability goals, reduce onsite emissions and improve the health for their workforce by teaming up with us to implement changes within their leased spaces,” she says, noting that the airport is currently assessing the feasibility of introducing reusable serveware at select airport food courts. Cooke also issues a call to action to those airports who haven’t yet committed to a sustainability journey. “We encourage other airports to follow our lead and consider implementing similar plastic-free programs in their facilities,” she says, “to reduce their environmental footprint, divert waste from landfills and reduce their plastic consumption overall.”

According to SEA spokesperson Perry Cooper, the airport’s ambitious sustainability goals include 60-percent municipal solid waste diversion from landfills and last year the airport managed to divert 48 percent. In addition, 79 tons of cooking oil from airport tenants was recycled into renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel and 34,836 meals – an average of roughly 670 meals a week – were donated to local food banks. “Since the food donation program began in 2006, SEA tenants have donated over half a million pounds of food, providing over 469,000 meals to SEA neighbors,” Cooper adds. “These donations are not only feeding the community but are preventing landfill emissions, and these donations have a widespread community impact as they’re shared among six South King County food banks.” Indeed, airport food donation programs have become commonplace in recent years as an effective way to reduce waste and also support local communities. The SFO Unites Against Hunger program provides 12,000 meals annually to those who are food insecure throughout the Bay Area, and in 2022 ATL partnered with Goodr ,

an Atlanta-based startup addressing the problem of food waste, to divert 9,624 pounds of wholesome food from landfills. “We started the PDX Food Donation program in 2013, currently in partnership with Urban Gleaners , an organization that redistributes unsold food from the airport to 42 sites around the Portland region, with more than 541,000 meals donated since the program began,” Anderson says, adding that she has high hopes for expanding this program. “Pre-packaged food is the low-hanging fruit and easy to manage, but we’re thinking bigger: Can we develop a program that redirects excess bulk food, like soups, rice, macaroni and cheese, et cetera? There are additional logistics and hurdles to properly handle this type of food but it can be done. We’d also like to continue using the data collected from the donation program to identify opportunities to prevent excess product. For example, are there products that are regularly being donated that don’t sell as well as others, are there seasonal purchasing trends, can we use passenger projections to determine how much product should be purchased? All that data can help us to further reduce waste at PDX.”

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AX NEWS FEBRUARY 2025