Lisa Daniell at forefront of Air New Zealand's work to cut environmental footprint

Lisa Daniell is at the spearhead of Air New Zealand's war on plastic. The airline's sustainability head has the ambitious goal of eliminating 24m separate items of single-use plastic over this current year. During the past year the airline has removed single-use plastic straws, stir sticks, eye mask wrappers and plastic toothbrushes from lounges and onboard aircraft. Over a 12-month period this will see the airline reduce its plastic footprint by 260,000 plastic toothbrushes, 3000 straws, 7.1m stirrers and 260,000 eye mask wrappers. She says one of the biggest challenges is finding alternatives to plastic that are genuinely biodegradable or recyclable. And they have to be lightweight. "Biodegradable depends on the time frame," says Daniell. "And we need to be able to better define what compostable. We need certification and rules." The IATA estimated the airline industry generated 5.2m tonnes of inflight waste in 2016 and Air NZ last year launched Project Green, a programme to stop so much being dumped. Story has more details.<br/>