Alaska Airlines® takes Boxed Water’s Pure-Pak® cartons to new heights

Alaska Airlines has partnered with our customer in the US, Boxed Water Is Better®, to start removing single-use plastic bottles from its flights.

According to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the airline industry generated 6.7 million tons of cabin waste in 2018. Their partnership with Alaska Airlines will remove 7.2 million plastic bottles a year, which is around 98,000 pounds of plastic from their flights.

This is the first national airline to address the plastic bottle issue and adopt water in cartons. Boxed Water was tested on select Alaska Air flights earlier this year and recently became available on all their first class flights in May.

Sustainability is part of the culture at Alaska Airlines who was also the first airline to remove plastic straws and stir sticks in 2018 and has been a carbon neutral airline since 2019. This is the latest initiative from the airline which plans to achieve net zero carbon emission by 2040.

The new carton was selected by the airline’s Green Team. Robbie Neff, Green Team member adds; “When researching alternatives to plastic water bottles, we considered a variety of factors on overall environmental impact such as water sourcing, packaging materials, recyclability, and shipping distance. Boxed Water scored better than the other options of glass bottles and aluminium cans, it has 36 percent lower carbon footprint and uses 43 per cent less fossil fuels than plastic counterparts.”

“Our partnership with Boxed Water enables us to offer our guests a significantly more renewable packaged water option,” adds Diana Birkett Rakow, vice president of public affairs and sustainability at Alaska Airlines. “We have received positive feedback from employees and guests and are excited to be expanding to more flights.”