Reducing waste through circularity

In FY25, we removed single-use plastic cups on Australian domestic flights and launched new premium economy and economy amenity kits using paper packaging to remove single-use plastic. These changes contributed to the removal or replacement of over 21 million additional single-use plastic items during the year. 

We continued our focus on increasing recycling or recovery activities and, in locations where the Group directly manages waste services with our service providers, we have increased our waste diversion from landfill to more than 40% in FY25, compared with 34% in FY24.

While we remain committed to reducing waste and eliminating single-use plastics wherever possible, we have removed our previously stated single-use plastics and waste targets, because our ability to achieve those targets is being impacted by factors including the availability of suitable solutions, our limited ability to affect changes in parts of our supply chain, and requirements such as safety and hygiene. We're currently exploring options for new waste-related targets which are practical and achievable in the current environment.

We continue to phase out single-use plastics where we can source suitable alternatives which meet the requirements. We're also working closely with our employees, suppliers, customers and regulators to continue to reduce waste across our operations. Our current focus areas include:

• initiatives for inflight and ground operations to reduce waste generation,
• introducing innovative alternatives to single-use plastics where feasible,
• increasing recycled and renewable content in our products,
• expanding recovery pathways for food waste, cardboard, timber and metals through recycling, donation or reuse,
• efforts to increase comingled recycling in ground facilities and inflight operations,
• establishing specialty recycling pathways and trialling solutions for hard-to-recycle materials like pallet wrap, coffee cups and trials for cargo straps, and
• exploring waste-to-energy pathways and opportunities for materials treated as quarantine waste.

More information is availble in our annual Sustainability Report.