Materials
Operations and passenger activity at a large airport like Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP) generates a significant volume of waste that must be managed properly. Strategies that reduce the production of waste, promote material reuse, and support recycling and composting are critical components of proper waste management by the MAC.
Reduce
To reduce food waste, MSP concessionaires have partnered with Loaves and Fishes, a Minneapolis-based non-profit that serves free meals across 12 Minnesota counties. Ready-to-eat items that are about to expire are picked up from MSP and either repurposed and served in meal programs to benefit people in need or distributed as-is at urban locations in the Twin Cities through Loaves and Fishes’ street outreach.
In 2023, MSP partners recovered 35 tons of food for donations, equal to 57,750 meals.
Reuse
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) provided thousands of cloth face masks to the MAC. When the federal mask mandate was terminated and the state of emergency came to an end, large amounts of those cloth masks had not been used at MSP Airport.
The MAC proactively repurposed all unused masks, sending 33 tons to a recycling facility to be reprocessed into insulation and the rest to a medical donation company with international ties. The effort diverted approximately 1% of the airport’s waste stream for the year.
Recycle
The MAC launched in-terminal recycling at MSP in 1997. To help travelers at MSP recycle right, the MAC utilizes easy-to-understand, standardized labels designed by Recycle Across America, a Twin Cities-based non-profit whose mission is to avoid confusion at the recycling bin. This has helped the MAC recycle an average of 1,600 tons of material annually over recent years.
Composting Program
MAC employees are bringing their expertise to bear to divert more material from the trash stream by developing strategies to increase the use of certified compostable materials and collect compostable organic material in the airport’s food courts.
Since 2009, the MAC has required all food and beverage concessionaires at MSP to separate compostable organic material from their back-of-house recycling and trash streams. The material is collected and sent off-site for processing into compost.