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Revealing the feasibility and environmental benefits of replacing disposable plastic tableware in aviation catering: An AHP-LCA integrated study

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Abstract

Reducing disposable plastic products has been in the spotlight lately, in order to address plastic pollution. With the rapid development of air transportation, plastic waste during flight is increasing, and most of it comes from catering. To evaluate the feasibility of replacing disposable plastic tableware, we carried out an integrated analytic hierarchy process (AHP) - life cycle assessment (LCA) study. The results show no significant feasibility in replacing salad bowls, while cutleries made of stainless steel, bamboo or bio-based plastic are preferred to petroleum-based plastic ones. In particular, bio-based plastic cutlery poses the least negative environmental impacts among all the disposable alternatives. Stainless steel cutlery will have the least carbon emissions when used more than 29 times. Replacing cutleries can reduce carbon emission by 12.5 g to 25.6 g of CO2 per cutlery set, leading to a maximum reduction of 10,219.51 t/a in China's domestic flights in 2019.

Introduction

Along with continuous growth in the production and usage of plastics, the mass generation and improper management of plastic waste have led to severe environmental problems. Countries around the world are striving to manage rapidly growing volumes of plastic waste and have made an ambitious commitment to ending plastic pollution (Tan et al., 2021; Simon et al., 2021; UNEA, 2022).

As the world's largest producer and consumer of plastics, China is propelling the efforts to tackle plastic pollution, with emphasis on reducing disposable plastic products (NDRC and MEE, 2020). Disposable plastic is widely used in packaging and containers, which account for half of the global plastic products (UNEP, 2018; Chen et al., 2021; Di et al., 2021). Replacing disposable plastic products with environmentally friendly ones is regarded as an essential approach to addressing plastic pollution (Tan et al., 2021).

In recent years, the rapid development of China's civil aviation industry has attached great importance to air transport in domestic long-distance travel. With disposable plastic as the most common material for aircraft food packaging and tableware, aviation catering is regarded as an important source of plastic waste. According to statistics of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), 6.1 million tons of plastic waste was generated by flights around the world in 2018, accounting for about 2% of global plastic waste and more than 50% of aircraft waste (WRAP, 2017; UNEP, 2018; Blanca-Alcubilla et al., 2018).

The increasing amount of plastic waste has impelled China to initiate plastic reduction programs in the aviation sector. Mixed with food waste, discarded plastic tableware is usually incinerated and not recycled, leading to a waste of resources and energy. In 2020, Hainan Airlines (2020) issued a special work plan to eliminate non-biodegradable and disposable plastic tableware on board.

With replacing disposable plastic as a common goal adopted by a variety of sectors, including aviation (American Airlines, 2018; Hi Fly, 2020), the comparison of plastic food packaging and tableware with its alternatives has appealed to increasing concerns from the perspective of environmental impacts (Mistretta et al., 2019; Usubharatana and Phungrassami, 2021; Tamburini et al., 2021; Mendes and Pedersen, 2021; Kan and Miller, 2022). It is estimated that global plastic production will account for one fifth of global oil consumption by 2050 (IEA, 2018), with the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from plastics accounting for 15% of the global carbon budget (WEF et al., 2016). The replacement of disposable plastic products could reduce plastic pollution, save fossil resources and even reduce overall carbon emissions.

In order to address plastic pollution, the life-cycle perspective is essential, and life-cycle assessment (LCA) methods should be adopted (Vendries et al., 2020; Kakadellis and Harris, 2020). Abejón et al. (2020) argued that plastic packaging could have the best environmental performance in certain applications, after carrying out an LCA study of reusable plastic crates and single-use cardboard. Sun et al. (2021) found that replacing 60% of disposable plastic tableware with reusable ones would reduce this sector's carbon emissions by 92%. Compostable and biodegradable plastic tableware have been shown to have better environmental performances when composted, considering that food waste and disposable tableware are usually mixed together, in catering service sectors (Razza et al., 2009; Fieschi and Pretato, 2018). In aviation catering, Blanca-Alcubilla et al. (2020) investigated all plastic products from a life cycle perspective and revealed that reusable items had a higher contribution to global warming potential than single-use items.

In order to investigate the most feasible and optimal alternatives, a number of other factors, in addition to environmental impacts, have been taken into account in recent studies. By combining LCA with other methods, including life cycle cost (LCC), material flow analysis (MFA) and input-output (IO), researchers could comprehensively evaluate and compare alternatives (Pranav et al., 2022; Zhang and Xu, 2022; van Stijn et al., 2022). Recently, some studies have integrated LCA with the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method to determine the optimal alternative, using the advantages of the AHP method for complex decision-making with multiple objectives and criteria (Li et al., 2008; Yuan et al., 2015; Dos Santos et al., 2019; Ong et al., 2020; Reza et al., 2011). Teh et al. (2019) adopted an integrated AHP-LCA model and found that the optimal process route differed from the LCA results.

However, to the best of our knowledge, the feasibility of replacing plastic tableware and food packaging with other materials, from a multi-dimensional perspective—including practical and economic performances—remains unstudied. To fill this research gap, we aimed to carry out a combined study of feasibility assessment and environmental impact analysis using an AHP-LCA integrated method. The study could provide guidance for the government, the aviation sector and individual enterprises, to take proper actions in selecting the optimal alternative for each situation, and reducing plastic waste.

The study first introduces the adopted AHP-LCA method in Section 2, explaining the processes to conduct the feasibility assessment and environmental-impact assessment of various alternatives, in aviation catering. Then, both the feasibility and the environmental benefits are elaborated at length in Section 3. Section 4 further discusses the key influencing factors, providing suggestions for improving the feasibility and environmental performance of the alternatives. The carbon emission reduction potential is also estimated.

Section snippets

Alternatives to disposable plastic products in aviation catering

The study first evaluated plastic consumption in aviation catering by investigating a company in southern China, located in an airport terminal and providing on-board meals for more than 200 flight routes. The investigation began by establishing a list of plastic products in typical aviation economy-class catering (Table A.1), including tableware and packaging. (It is worth noting, at the outset, that not all plastics are reusable.)

Given the special concerns around pre-packaged products, and

Feasibility of tableware replacement in aviation catering

The weight of each alternative represents the evaluation results of its comprehensive performance. The higher the weight, the better performance. The results are shown in Fig. 4.

Approaches to improving the replacement of salad bowls

The study concluded that there was little feasibility in replacing disposable plastic salad bowls with reusable ones. The sensitivity analysis of the AHP study for salad bowls revealed that the cost of production, cost of treatment, reusability, toxicity and hygiene could, however, change the preferred alternative under the current decision hierarchy.

To enhance the replacement of salad bowls in aviation catering, producers of salad bowls should focus on technological innovation to reduce

Conclusion

This study revealed a weak feasibility for replacing disposable plastic salad bowls but a strong feasibility for replacing cutlery, in aviation catering. It also proved that similar products could have different preferences, emphasizing the need to conduct specific research according to actual situations, in future research.

Using a combined AHP and LCA approach, the study provided references in cutlery selection for the government and private enterprises. Bio-based plastic cutlery had the best

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Fan Wei: Methodology, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Visualization. Quanyin Tan: Conceptualization, Methodology, Writing – review & editing. Kaixin Dong: Methodology, Investigation. Jinhui Li: Conceptualization, Supervision.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgement

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China [grant numbers 2019YFC1904800], and the authors would also like to thank the SINOPLAST Project between the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Commerce of China [grant numbers CHN-2152, 19/0026] and PWP Pilot Project Programme of the Basel Convention.

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