Smith, K. (2019, August 24). San Francisco Airport Just Banned Plastic Water Bottles.
Retrieved from https://www.livekindly.com/san-francisco-airport-just-banned-
plastic-water-bottles/
The San Francisco International Airport is attempting to be more environmentally friendly by banning restaurants and shops from selling single-use items such as bottled water to customers. Although the plastics are recyclable, only 9% of plastics in the U.S. are actually recycled. The airport also announced that they would expand to add another 100 water bottle filling stations throughout their terminals. They also announced that restaurants may only give customers single-use items such as condiment packets only by request. This is a part of their effort to become a zero “waste-to-landfill” airport by 2021.
This article is a great example of how businesses are trying to become eco friendly and trying to be beneficial to the environment. I think that this is a great idea and more businesses and airports should follow in the footsteps of SFO, because single-use plastic has become so detrimental to the planet. This makes sense for an airport to do this, because you cannot bring any liquids past security and most people just end up buying water after security for the convenience of not having to bring their own reusable bottles for water. The airport now encourages people to bring metal water bottles by implementing their water refill stations which is becoming a norm in most new buildings. Too much plastic is ending up in the ocean and this is a great way to mitigate that.
I think that banning single-use items is a good initializing step towards minimizing the use of plastic, big companies that are abiding to the new policy encourages other companies to do the same. I think it’s also good that they are providing refill stations for people who buy or bring their own reusable bottles because it wouldn’t cost anything for the consumers.
It is really nice to hear that a business close to us is taking steps in the right direction to help reduce pollution. I hope other businesses follow their example. I hope SFO takes even more steps to reduce trash and pollution because although plastic water bottles are a big issue – there are also many more issues that need attending.
I found this very interesting to read about since it’s happening just a few miles up the road from us. It’s nice to see companies actually making a change or at least attempting to, rather than just talking about it. Do you think this will cause other airports to start doing this if they havent done so already?