Do airlines recycle uneaten, unopened, pre-packaged food?

8/19/2013 5:19:05 PM

Short answer: No, it will be collected by the caterer upon arrival.

Long answer, Airlines do not actually handle catering, the catering companies do handle this. Airlines will have a catering partner in every airport they operate flights to.

In domestic flights where the airplanes is scheduled to have a few sectors assignment (pairing in airlines terminology) sometimes the outbound flight is catered for more that one sector at once. For example if the pairing contains short flights (domestic usually) like going from A to B then back to A the caterer in A will provide double catering to the crew which is usually juices in short sectors, the crew will use the same catering in both legs, but these juice cartons/bottles are ok to reuse and they are not touched directly by passengers. Airlines do the double catering to save money and to make the ground time between flights shorter. Anyway this won’t work in long international sectors.

In long pairings that contains mid/long haul flights where the aircraft will be catered in each sector, usually each sector will be covered by a different caterer, each caterer will offload the previous used carts and supply the flight with new full carts. You can never know what does the caterer do to the excess food. Each caterer have its own policy depending on the company and local regulations. In the company I work the major caterer for the company do NOT reuse any items, they simply throw it. I have a friend who worked there he told me once that the employees are allowed to take from the returned items on their own responsibility. Do not know about other airlines, but some items like soda cans for example are safe to reuse, I guess they donate it or even resell it!

One last thing, airlines do not expect the catering on board to be returned, they supply the flight with food and beverages enough to passengers and crew and may be supply few extra meals just in case.

Credit:stackoverflow.com‘

About me

Hello,My name is Aparna Patel,I’m a Travel Blogger and Photographer who travel the world full-time with my hubby.I like to share my travel experience.

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