The Refinishing Touch Blog

Over recent blog posts we've been dedicating this space to the three R's: Reduce, Recycle and Reuse. Today we are looking specifically at 'Reduction', and would like to pay a special tribute to Virgin Atlantic.

Last month Virgin Atlantic carried out the world's first flight of a commercial aircraft powered with biofuel. "This breakthrough will help Virgin Atlantic to fly its planes using clean fuel sooner than expected," Sir Richard Branson, the airline's president, said before the Boeing 747 flew from London's Heathrow Airport to Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport. This pioneering flight was made possible with a biofuel mixture of coconut and babassu oil in one of its four main fuel tanks.

Although it is debatable how much positive impact this will actually have on carbon emissions, we applaud this development and Virgin Atlantic's ongoing commitment to endeavoring to reduce environmentally harmful waste. The airline has successfully reduced the waste it produces in all ground operations and continues to strive to reduce the waste it produces in the air. It has set ambitious goals to reduce the waste sent to landfills from its aircrafts by 50% by 2012.

Here at The Refinishing Touch we know it's the little things which really count towards the big picture and Virgin Atlantic is truly dedicated to waste reduction. In December 2008 it placed the largest order to date of the 27% more efficient Dreamliners in a bid to replace its ordinary gas guzzling planes. We just hope to see more airlines following in Virgin’s footsteps.

Labels: carbon emissions, Reduce, Virgin Atlantic