What do LED lighting, ancient Indigenous fire management techniques and the ‘big data’ from a jet engine have in common?   Not much at first glance – but they’re all helping reduce the environmental impact of Qantas flights.

After the success on our domestic services – inflight recycling is starting on our international flights

All up, the global aviation industry accounts for about two per cent of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions.  The goal is to stop airline emissions from growing by 2020, and eventually cut them in half compared with 2005 levels.

New aircraft like the Boeing 787 and the continued development of low-carbon biofuels are all going to be part of the mix in making that happen.

But there’s a huge variety of other things the Qantas team is doing to reduce our impact on the environment – here’s 10 of the best.

• 12 tonnes of rubbish is recycled from our domestic flights every month and we’ve now rolled out recycling on international services with the aim to divert 350 tonnes of waste from landfill every year.
• We have partnered with GE Aviation, using billions of data points from our 200 strong fleet to find ways to improve the efficiency of our aircraft.
  
•  To play our part in the global food chain, we’ve installed 10 beehives at our Sydney HQ, producing honey that’s now served in our First and Business cabins.
• More than 6000 kilometres of plastic (enough to stretch from Sydney to Singapore) is diverted from landfill as we deliver headsets and pyjamas without plastic wrapping.
  

  From cooking oil to bio fuel

• Replacing thousands of paper flight manuals with iPads and introducing lightweight carbon brakes, means we’re reducing the weight of our aircraft, our fuel costs, and emissions foot print.
• We’ve introduced more than 35,000 LEDs at 20 Qantas facilities across the country, cutting $2 million a year off our electricity bill.
• Our carbon offset program, the biggest of its kind in the world, supports a range of great projects such as indigenous land owners in the North Kimberley using traditional fire management techniques to prevent uncontrolled wildfires and help regenerate the land.
• With the help of OzHarvest we’re cutting waste by donating non-perishable food items from our flights to school breakfast programs.
  

  Our bee-spoke honey is now onboard in Business and First

• We’ve rolled out Ground Power Units (GPU) to supply power to our fleet on the ground so we’re not burning jet fuel when not flying.
• We’re partnering with corporate Australia through the Qantas Future Planet Partnership – to offset business travel emissions and engage our respective customers, employees and supply chain on sustainability, environmental and social initiatives – you can find out more here.