On an average long-haul flight cabin crew distribute soft drinks three to four times in plastic cups to the customers. This means that at the end of an eight-hour flight, each customer ends up with 3-4 plastic cups in addition to the plastic waste generated through meals and snacks served on board.

A simple and free way of avoiding this extra plastic waste is to serve additional drinks in the same cup-refill rather than replace. This simple change in practice wouldn’t cost the airline anything, indeed it would save them money. If each customer agrees to have their cup refilled rather than replaced, then on an average flight it would mean a saving of cca 900 plastic cups.

When I asked the cabin crew on my recent Cathay Pacific flight from Auckland to Hong Kong why not to reuse the same cup I was told that ‘they have always done it this way’. Given that the world plastic waste is at record high, why not try doing it the other way?