INTRODUCTION
Although the aviation industry has contributed to economic sustainability, it has been long criticized to be one main reason of environmental degradation. With problems like fuel consumption, aircraft noise, air quality relevant emission, and other emission during flight travel, etc., the industry is referred as ‘dirty’ industry. The airline giant Virgin Atlantic takes the leading role on the war against carbon. As the director of customer experience at Virgin Atlantic said, although value of money and product quality are critical issues to take into consideration, the passengers of Virgin Atlantic expect more than that. Environmental sustainability has been concerned by more and more people …show more content…
While as a efficient travel method, plane flight journey is associated with problems including carbon and heat emission, loud noises, and producing of particulates and gases. European Commission reveals that from 1990 to 2006, the increasing rate of gas emissions from aviation industry is as high as 87 percent. Further more, the rapid growth of aviation industry make the environmental problems even worse. Take figures of 2014 for examples, the occupied seats of the year is 3 billion, which doubled the number of 1999, and the U.S. airlines alone has used 16.2 billion gallons of aviation …show more content…
The company sets goal of sustainable aviation and have introduced number of strategies to reduce environmental footprints and improve operation efficiency. As sir Richard Branson claimed (2006), although the aviation industry contributed in economic sustainability, the fact that aviation resulted in numbers of environmental issues should not be neglected, thus the company would work hard in reducing environmental impact of aviation industry.
On Virgin Atlantic website, the company conclude their environmental strategies in three main areas: carbon, waste, and buying.
CARBON
Carbon emission is aviation company’s most important environmental issue. The company goal is to reduce carbon emission per flying mile by 30 percent by the year of 2020. This target will be achieved with more efficient aircraft, fuel efficient technologies, alternative aviation fuel, and efficient flaying