LOS ANGELES WORLD AIRPORTS CELEBRATES EARTH DAY WITH PILOT ORGANIC WASTE RECYCLING PROGRAM
(Los Angeles, California – April 21, 2017) Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), in partnership with the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation (LASAN), will begin a pilot food waste recycling program at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) that will supply a new source of clean and renewable energy. Coinciding with Earth Day 2017, April 22, the Organics Waste Recycling Pilot Program will collect food waste from a targeted sample of restaurants and other airport concessionaires. Following collection, the food waste will be transported for conversion into natural gas using an anaerobic digestion process.
“The Organic Waste Recycling Pilot program offers a unique opportunity to expand our sustainability efforts further into the terminals,” said Los Angeles Board of Commissioners President Sean Burton. “We thank LASAN and our pilot program participants for taking this step with us, and we look forward to evaluating the results.”
“LAWA believes that protecting and strengthening our environment takes a village, and having great partners like our pilot program participants and the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation is what makes change happen,” said Los Angeles World Airports Chief Executive Officer Deborah Flint. “We expect that the Organic Waste Recycling Pilot program will become a significant part of the wide variety of environmentally-conscious programs now underway at LAX and Van Nuys.”
Participating food-serving establishments include one full-service restaurant, one fast food restaurant, and one café located in Terminals 7 and 8, in addition to the United Club airline lounge, forming a representative sample of the types of food-selling establishments found throughout LAX. At each location, LAWA’s Maintenance Services Division (MSD) will collect food waste from each establishment’s “back of house” and prepare it for collection and transportation. LASAN will then transport the food waste to City of Los Angeles Transfer Site (CLARTS) for further consolidation before transporting it to CR&R Environmental Services, Inc., where it will undergo the anaerobic digestion process and ultimately be converted into natural gas fuel. Solid and liquid organic waste that cannot be converted to methane gas will be converted into commercial grade fertilizer. The pilot program will run for a 90-day period and LAWA will evaluate the results.
As an environmental leader among airports, LAWA’s staff and partners have worked to reduce energy consumption, recycle many different types of waste, and improve air quality.
Over the five-year period between 2010 and 2015, LAX reduced its total energy use by over 50 percent on a per-passenger basis, despite growing demand. Between 2011 and 2015, LAX decreased its potable water use by 25 percent on a per-passenger basis, and uses recycled water in half of its landscaped areas. In another partnership with LASAN, LAWA is developing a new Sub-Basin Water Infiltration Facility, which will transport stormwater to underground infiltration galleries to recharge the local groundwater basin.
LAWA also recycles pre-packaged food, green waste, and construction debris. Through the LAX Harvest Food Donation Program, the airport and its concessionaire partners have donated over 150,000 pounds of unconsumed, pre-packaged food to local non-profit organizations. As part of its work in ensuring the health of the LAX Dunes habitat, which is home to the endangered El Segundo Blue Butterfly, LAWA MSD removed and repurposed over 47 tons of non-native plants for animal consumption at the LA Zoo in 2015. And throughout the airport, LAX’s Clean Construction Program is credited with recycling more than 83 percent of debris from the construction of the New Tom Bradley International Terminal, and saving 3.5 tons of nitrogen oxide gas and more than two million pounds of greenhouse gases (GHG) from entering the atmosphere during recent taxiway construction.
In the area of air quality, LAWA was recognized with Airport Carbon Accreditation (ACA) Level 2 by Airports Council International in 2016 for its commitment to reduce GHG emissions by 45 percent below 1990 levels by 2025, and by 80 percent by 2050. To date, LAWA has reduced emissions of carbon dioxide-equivalent gases from 1990 levels, from 111,000 metric tons in 1990 to 84,883 in 2015. In 2016, LAX also became the first U.S. airport to adopt commercial-scale use of biofuels in partnership with United Airlines, which can reduce carbon emissions from aircraft by up to 60 percent.
About Los Angeles International Airport (LAX)
LAX is the fourth busiest airport in the world, second in the United States, and was named one of Skytrax’ 2017 Top 10 Most Improved Airports. LAX served more than 80.9 million passengers in 2016. LAX offers 742 daily nonstop flights to 101 cities in the U.S. and 1,280 weekly nonstop flights to 77 cities in 42 countries on 64 commercial air carriers. LAX ranks 14th in the world and fifth in the U.S. in air cargo tonnage processed, with more than 2.2 million tons of air cargo valued at over $101.4 billion. LAX handled 697,138 operations (landings and takeoffs) in 2016.
An economic study based on 2014 operations reported LAX generated 620,610 jobs in Southern California with labor income of $37.3 billion and economic output (business revenues) of more than $126.6 billion. This activity added $6.2 billion to local and state revenues and $8.7 billion in federal tax revenues. The study also reported that LAX’s ongoing capital-improvement program creates an additional 121,640 annual jobs with labor income of $7.6 billion and economic output of $20.3 billion, $966 million in state and local taxes, and $1.6 billion in federal tax revenues.
LAX is part of a system of two Southern California airports – along with Van Nuys general aviation – that are owned and operated by Los Angeles World Airports, a proprietary department of the City of Los Angeles that receives no funding from the City’s general fund.
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