SCHIPHOL AIRPORT
About this good practice
With the globalization of the economy, airplanes have become a regular way of transport, transforming airports into international hubs for logistics and transportation in general. This way, nowadays airports are responsible for high CO2 and fine particle emissions, and they also consume large quantities of energy, water and raw materials. If they want to survive for the long run and maintain their role as connectors and hubs for logistics, airports need to become sustainable, as most of the resources they are using are finite or harming for the environment. In line with this goal, Schiphol airport has punt in place several inttiatives such as: baggage conveyors made with recycled materials that save energy, a “waste-water to fertilizers” project, concrete recycling for using in internal roads, using Phillips’ “light as a service” in one of the lounges, a project to use elephant grass as a natural bird repellent and then as a material to produce outdoor furniture, producing paint from flax waste, building a bio-digestor to generate biogas and use it in the airport.
The first beneficiary is the airport itself, as it is preparing itself for the future. There are multiple stakeholders for each project, so we could speak of an entire ecosystem of local stakeholders that are related to the airport’s activity.
Resources needed
This data is currently under collection
Evidence of success
Several projects of Circular Economy have been put in place:
- Replaced traditional lights with a lighting service provided by Philips
- Cultivation of bird-repellent flax growing on fallow lands near the airport and production of a paint from the seeds of the same plant to be used within the airport
- Outdoor furniture made of bird-repellent flax, elephant grass and bio-concrete
- Energy efficient and recyclable baggage conveyor belt
- Fertilizer from waste water
Potential for learning or transfer
More than the individual projects that can be found in this area (that are already interesting per se), this is a good case to learn from a cluster minded strategy to foster the circular economy around a set of related activities, with potential for gaining scale. This strategy also includes public-private collaboration, from which it is possible to learn in order to dynamize similar strategies.
Further information
Website
Good practice owner
You can contact the good practice owner below for more detailed information.
Schiphol Group