British Airways has a new target to remove more than 700 tonnes of single-use plastic on board its flights in 2020, amounting to more than a quarter of a billion individual items of plastic and equivalent to more than 30,000 suitcases full of single-use plastic – leaving the company’s PR department the opportunity of creating a giant plastic suitcase to illustrate the point.

The airline has already rolled out initiatives to remove 25 million individual items of single-use plastic on board each year, equivalent to 90 tonnes, and has now set a higher target to increase this by 700 per cent.

Working with its suppliers, the company has identified alternatives to single-use plastic items and will replace as many as possible with recyclable or re-usable items or items from sustainable sources.

Kate Tanner, British Airways’ customer experience manager said: “We’ve spent a long time researching how to make sustainable changes without causing environmental impact elsewhere. For instance, we are looking at the amount of water and detergent needed to wash metal cutlery and how often it needs to be replaced versus using plastic or bamboo cutlery.”

The giant suitcase was created by Sarah Turner is actually made from a thousand pieces of waste plastic, including 160 spoons, more than a dozen plastic stirrers, drinks lids, plastic wrap, bubble wrap, catering dishes and covers and bottles. It is currently on display at British Airways' Headquarters near Heathrow.

British Airways committed in October 2019 to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050. From January this year, British Airways began offsetting carbon emissions on all its flights within the UK and is investing in new, more fuel-efficient aircraft and in the development of sustainable aviation fuels.

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