Reducing our waste through circularity

The Group aims to offer zero single-use plastics by 2027¹ and zero onshore general waste to landfill by 2030.²

As part of our efforts, we're working with our employees, suppliers, customers and regulators to reduce the waste generated by our operations, and these include:

• minimising waste through more efficient inflight and ground operations,
  
• introducing innovative product and packaging alternatives targeted at removing single-use plastics,
  
• increasing the use of recycled content or renewable materials in high volume products,
• expanding recovery pathways for waste materials, including comingled recycling, organics, cardboard, timber, metal, specialty recycling trials, donation or redistribution, and
  
• exploring waste to energy pathways and opportunities to recover low-risk materials treated as quarantine waste.

In FY24, we removed or replaced more than 107 million single-use plastic items.³

We continue to identify opportunities to reduce plastics across our operations and in our inflight service where possible, while considering safety, hygiene, and various regulatory and operational requirements. 

This includes the introduction of compostable hot meal boxes on domestic flights, responsibly sourced wooden cutlery, bamboo drink stirrers, changes to our amenity kits, phasing out single-serve condiments in our lounges, and trialling reduced thickness pallet wrap and protective sheeting made of 100% recycled plastic in Freight operations.

We're working with our suppliers to increase the use of recycled and renewable materials and consider the environmental impact in the design phase of our products.

Since 2011, the Qantas Group has been a signatory to the Australian Packaging Covenant.  We're working to improve the sustainability of the packaging we use, including seeking to increase the use of recycled content, redesign to improve recovery, and where possible are transitioning products to recyclable or compostable alternatives.

In FY24, through a suite of initiatives on the ground and in the air, we recycled almost 3,500 tonnes of waste, representing 25% of total waste diverted from landfill. One of our highest impact initiatives is inflight recycling on domestic flights, with more than 165 tonnes of recycling collected on Qantas and Jetstar flights. This has also been introduced on Jetstar domestic flights within New Zealand.

See our latest Sustainability Report for more information.