Responsible tourism and plastics

Microbeads

Although now banned in many countries, they have not been eliminated worldwide, so do be aware of them when making toiletry purchases abroad. These tiny plastic balls, or 'microbeads', found in household beauty and cleaning products, make their way from company factories to seabed ecosystems worldwide. The knock-on effect of these beads is fatal as they are ingested by fish, harm flora and fauna, act as magnets for harmful chemicals and enter the human food chain as a result.

I have a right to drinking water free of charge – or do I?

Water is a human right. So declared the UN in July 2010, stating that ‘safe and clean drinking water and sanitation is a human right essential to the full enjoyment of life and all other human rights.’ Try telling that to the airport customer service desk as you traipse around looking for a fountain to fill up your water bottle after you have downed all the contents before going through security. Of course, this UN Declaration concerns the right of human beings to have access to clean drinking water around the world, particularly in countries where contamination is an issue.

Our right to request free drinking water on our travels is a grey water area, and it changes according to the country you are in. Under British law, you have the right to ask for free tap water in licensed premises but only if you are a paying customer. The same applies to schools and workplaces, unless you are in Northern Ireland where Ulster continues to ‘say no’ to free water. Unlicensed premises are under no obligation to provide free drinking water, so this would include airports (unless you work there, of course).

This is changing, however, with more and more transport hubs around the world being put under pressure to provide water fountains, and the largest of UK’s international airports do now have fountains after you pass through security. Keep Britain Tidy is a big player in this movement, in order to reduce the consumption of bottled water.

LIFE + Zero Cabin Waste

The EU-funded Life + Zero Cabin Waste campaign was launched in 2016. It aims to tackle the issue of airlines’ waste, the majority of which is compacted, incinerated or sent to landfill. All the more reason to bring your own picnic set on board. Good luck with that, given that a lot of cutlery won’t be allowed through security. However, we fully appreciate that this is complex territory as you are dealing with different countries’ regulations, and so new Zero Cabin Waste guidelines are being tried out by Iberia airline in Madrid to see if they can come up with a framework that works for all airlines.


Marina G. Aedo, Environmental Affairs at Iberia, working on LIFE Zero Cabin Waste project:

“We have carried out different trial flights where we have tested different characteristics of our project to make sure we are going along the right path. Our goal is to reduce the generation of waste by 5 percent and to recycle 4.500 tons of waste per year. The Spanish Congress has approved a legislation modification whereby the commercialisation, exportation and importation of single use plastics utensils will be banned. By the end of 2019, we expect to carry out a replication phase of our project in London Heathrow. Many EU airports such as Frankfurt are developing sustainable projects to reduce the generation of waste in their facilities. However, in order to increase the percentage of recycled cabin waste, it is not always the airport’s participation that is needed, but that of the agent in charge of the waste management.”