HI Impact - Hawaiian Air

Hawaiian Airlines

Consumer Affairs Office

P. O. Box 30008

Honolulu, HI 96820

Aloha! I recently flew round-trip on Hawaiian Air between SJC and HNL with my wife and three-year-old son. While the flight itself was fine and the in-flight service crew did a great job, I have some concerns about your corporate policies regarding carbon output, trash and packaging which I hope you can address. 

First, the big one. Air travel is inherently polluting due to the large amount of hydrocarbons airplanes consume and the fact that the climate-change-causing exhaust byproducts are put directly into the upper atmosphere where they do the most damage. Obviously Hawaiian Air, like all commercial airlines, has no econonmic incentive to get people to reduce their amount of air travel; quite the opposite. However, would you consider an option to allow passengers to mitigate the impact of their air travel by purchasing carbon offsets at ticket purchase time? The added cost to the customer is pretty small relative to the cost of the ticket -- from leading offset provider Terrapass, offsetting my SJC<->HNL round trip is only $13 -- and it would allow consumers to do something environmentally positive before they fly, not to mention providing a positive message that Hawaiian Airlines is concerned about climate change.

For beverage service, there were no fewer than five plastic cups (take-off beverage, pre-meal, post-meal, coffee and water service) offered per passenger and no announcements or individual comments from the crew that passengers should save or re-use the cups. In fact, the service crew walked the aisles with trash bags very quickly after each beverage service, encouraging the cups be thrown away even though a second round of service followed within minutes. It seems to me there are a number of easy improvements to be made here which would save money for the airline, promote a greener public image and reduce waste. The easiest thing to do would be to make announcements encouraging people to save and reuse their cups multiple times throughout the flight. To go a step further, perhaps Hawaiian could provide durable cups (branded with a logo?), encourage passengers to keep them after the flight, and simply sterilize and reuse the ones which aren't kept. 

Last, during the food service, I noticed that the sandwich offering was double-wrapped in plastic and even the utensils were encased in another separate layer of plastic. When trash was collected, all the food scraps were tossed together with plastic, foil and paper trash so I have to assume they were going to landfill rather than to recycling. I understand there are considerations of hygiene and mass-production which drive packaging decisions, but shouldn't these concerns be balanced against the lasting impact of dozens of daily flights producing many cubic yards of trash which will persist in the environment forever? Following the motto of "reduce, reuse, recycle", the best option would be to reduce the amount of packaging used; the next best thing would be reusable containers (to be fair, the cooked meals come in containers which I believe are indeed re-used multiple times), and at a minimum separating the recyclable plastic from the food trash would be better than simply throwing everything away.  

In summary, I would like to ask that Hawaiian Airlines consider evaluating its environmental impact and making changes that could end up helping the planet, saving the company money, and boosting its environmental credibility all at the same time. Considering Hawaii's unique ecological fragility and a growing awareness that we need to be stewards of the land, it makes moral sense as well as business sense for Hawaiian Airlines to take the opportunity to become a leader in this regard.

Malama Ka `Aina, e Malama i Ke Kai!

Eric Sorenson

[By Fax and Postal Mail]