British Airways could soon stop serving bottles of water on board its flights. Don’t worry, that doesn’t mean you’ll go thirsty on your next eight hour flight across the Atlantic – the airline is simply planning to replace plastic bottles with paper cups.
Last week, the change was temporarily introduced on a select few flight routes. People travelling from London Heathrow to Miami, Boston and Los Angeles were the first to trial the switch-up, with a trial running between June 16 and June 22. People flying first class or part of BA’s Club World will still got to drink their water from bottles, though.
A spokesperson for British Airways said: ‘This is a one-week trial on three routes as part of efforts to reduce plastic waste. The views of our customers are very important to us, and we’ll be listening very carefully to their feedback.’
On its website, BA adds: ‘Working towards implementing a circular economy, we aim to keep our resources in use for as long as possible through product design, re-use and recycling and through partnerships with our suppliers,’ the airline added. ‘We’re dedicated to finding innovative solutions that are better for the environment.’
Anything that’s better for the planet is surely a good thing (though we’re not sure it quite offsets all of the airplanes’ carbon emissions). The airline industry creates a humungous 6.1 million tonnes of plastic waste each year (around two percent of the world’s plastic waste), so environmentalists have been asking for a ban on in-flight plastic bottles for some time.
But the experiment has proved a little controversial. One critic complained that it’s simply a ‘cost-saving exercise under the guise of saving the polar bears’. They were on one of the guinea pig flights and said: ‘All I asked for was a bottle of water and the response astounded me. I thought I had heard it all. Clearly not. I was told there were no bottles of water they could give me as BA is trialling not offering any bottles of water. Unbelievable.’
To clarify – passengers will still get complimentary water, just not in a sealable plastic bottle. It’s not been confirmed yet whether the eco-friendly swap will be rolled out across the whole BA network. The airline is reviewing customer feedback before it makes an official decision.
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