The problem with airline food and packaging

Every day, Emirates' airline catering facility prepares 180,000 meals to service its more than 400 daily flights around the globe. The Emirates facility is one of the world's biggest airline food factories, but there are similar operations across the world. The scale of inflight catering is astonishing -- as is its waste problem. Half-eaten meals, tossed beers, empty plastic water bottles, napkins, discarded packaging -- look around a cabin at the end of any flight and you can get a sense of the waste on a small scale.<br/>And the big picture? According to the IATA, airlines produced 5.2m tons of waste last year, and will produce over 10m tons annually by 2030. While the statistic includes a host of disposable products -- from wine bottles to plastic toothbrushes -- a large chunk is directly related to food service. From harnessing behavioral data and using cups that can be composted to donating nonperishable food items and on-board recycling, here's what airlines are doing to divert cabin waste from landfills.<br/>