Airbus, Boeing Eco friendly aircraft recycling increases
By Nick July 13, 2008
In the rush of airlines to decrease their carbon footprints and sky rocketing fuel costs, more and more older, less fuel efficient aircraft may be grounded earlier. These grounded airplanes won’t be just sent to the dump, but still have a long life ahead of them with Airbus’ and Boeing’s relatively new eco friendly recycling programs.
An interesting article recently discusses what happens to aircraft that are grounded. Back in March of 2005, Airbus created a program to recycle old aircraft in an eco friendly way, and named it Pamela (Process for Advanced Management of End of Life Aircraft). In response, US Boeing Afra (Aircraft Fleet Recycling Association) quickly showed up to the party to offer an eco friendly recycling program for grounded Boeing aircraft.
While Airbus’ Pamela is a very eco friendly program, it may also become a lucrative venture for the company. Pamela officials believe that 85% of of an Airbus aircraft can be recycled and they plan to use these parts to set up a certified, government endorsed second hand market for aircraft parts.
Within the next several years, up to 8,500 airplanes are expected to be grounded by their airlines, but this figure could increase with rising fuel costs. So the market for Pamela and Afra will surely be growing, making these eco friendly initiatives lucrative.
While Afra and Pamela could become large ventures, they are not monopolies by any means. Many of the grounded planes will be sent to poorer third world countries to make up their fleets instead as air travel grows in their respective economies.
The future for these programs is bright, and Boeing is already looking toward the future into recycling the light weight composite materials that are going to make up large parts of their new 787 Dreamliner aircraft. While recycling the composite fuselodges could be a problem, Boeing and NC State researchers think that they have a solution to recycle the materials to make the composites suitable for use in other, non-aircraft industries.
Topics: Recycling |
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