Air Dinner

Disposable products put great stress on the environment due to the sheer volumes required to fulfill the demand. An industry growing dependent of disposable products is the airline food industry. Today many airline meals are fully composed of different disposable items. These products end up in landfills and/or combusted after use.

The focus of this master thesis is through product design explore different alternatives to the current disposable airline tableware in order to reduce the environmental impact of the airline tableware. Based upon an iterative product development model airline tableware concepts were created in order to explore, test, analyze and verify potential approaches and ideas. The promising concepts and ideas were later matured into a single final product candidate.

The final product, Air Dinner, utilizes both aspects of design and carefully selected materials in order to reduce the environmental impact of the airline tableware. This is achieved through its light weight design, user friendly features, simplified waste management, structured layout and improved packaging.

This thesis demonstrates that it is possible to through careful design decisions develop an airline tableware that has a reduced environmental impact compared to common alternatives; though it is also shown that through further improvements it is possible to reduce the product’s impact even more. As this thesis shows, there is great potential within the area of sustainable designed airline tableware and that the airline meal industry is lagging in their development within these types of products and initiatives.