Moving Toward Better Decision-Making for Air Cargo Sustainability

How can we make smarter, more sustainable choices when sourcing plastic sheeting or stretch wrapping for cargo operations?  

In August, IATA published the first standardized guidance for Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology for single-use plastic products in the airline sector. The publication aims to enable consistent, robust, and comparable LCA studies across key aviation product categories, giving stakeholders a clear picture of the environmental trade-offs involved when switching from Single-Use Plastic Products (SUPP) to different alternatives. 

Building a standardized approach

 

SUPP remain widely used in air cargo, valued for their practicality and compliance with safety requirements. However, as environmental concerns increase, aviation stakeholders need a systematic approach to assessing and mitigating the environmental impact of these products and their alternatives. 

The new IATA guidance provides that framework, ensuring consistent, reliable, and comparable LCA studies across three key aviation product categories that include plastic sheeting and stretch wrapping used in cargo operations. It aligns with ISO standards 14040 and 14044 and offers detailed protocols for identifying the goals and scope of an LCA, defining functional units, selecting impact categories, modeling end-of-life scenarios, and assessing data quality and uncertainty. Focusing on a cradle-to-grave perspective, it also includes recommendations for sensitivity analysis and understanding environmental trade-offs. 

Making comparisons consistent for air cargo components

 

The 2024 IATA publication Single Use Plastic Products Reduction in Air Cargo: Plastic Sheets & Stretch Wrap (pdf), introduced LCAs to the air cargo industry as a tool to empower stakeholders to make informed, environmentally conscious decisions about replacing SUPP. The new guidance goes a step further to provide aviation stakeholders with a harmonized standard for conducting and interpreting LCAs across the sector.  

While the guidance focuses on reusable alternatives to SUPP, the methodology is neutral with respect to materials and can be applied to plastic or non-plastic items without modification. Similarly, it can be used to compare single-use with single-use or reusable with reusable products, simply by discarding any sections that do not apply. For air cargo stakeholders, this means a practical, harmonized approach to evaluating all types of cargo components, supporting better, evidence-based decisions for a more sustainable operation.