LATAM Group - Recycle your journey

Latin American airline group LATAM, claims to be one of the top three sustainable airline groupings in the world. As part of that, it has launched a ‘Recycle your Journey’ initiative.

Essentially the programme will see waste from ‘Mercado LATAM’, the company’s buy on board food service being recycled. The initiative was launched on domestic fights in Chile in July, and is due to be rolled out to other Latin American countries over the coming months.

The industry is of course under increasing pressure to show it is environmentally responsible, and every month we now see a different airline announcing that it is reducing or eliminating plastic - the latest to do so is Emirates.

These initiatives are important, but the challenge for airlines is much more fundamental than plastic use or recycling. In Europe especially there is increasing debate about whether air travel itself is ethical.

This comes as 16 year old Greta Thunberg, one of the figureheads of the environmental movement, announced that she will be travelling to the UN Climate Action Summit in September, via a zero emissions race yacht, the Malizia II.

Greta Thunberg is of course Swedish, and Sweden has witnessed the phenomenon of ‘flygskam’ or flight shaming.

See as well our April editorial on the subject.