Ready for Takeoff: Cradle to Cradle Principles Applied to Aviation

Writer: Ethan Brown

Editor: Sunny Bell

Senior Division

Aviation is stubbornly pollutive, responsible for considerable global greenhouse gas emissions. While it has become more energy efficient, total pollution has only been rising due to an exponential surge in demand. Airports are now found in more places, serving more people, and dispatching more flights. (Klöwer et al. 2021). Furthermore, change across the industry moves slowly, with commercial aircrafts remaining in use for about 25 to 30 years (European Union Aviation Safety Agency, 2024). Although addressing pollution in this industry presents a difficult challenge, implementation of sustainable designs provides an abundance of hope. 

Current engine and jet fuel technology constraints dictate air travel’s present environmental impact. However, promising emerging technologies are constantly being developed. Given aircrafts’ lengthy operational life, innovation can gradually replace obsolete, polluting design. In terms of understanding this transformation, cradle to cradle principles will be applied, contrasting short-term fixes to genuine objectives for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. 

What is Cradle to Cradle 

Back in 2002, German Chemist Michael Braungart and American architect William McDonough co-authored a groundbreaking book called Cradle to Cradle and its sequel, The Upcycle. It is the culmination of their findings, working together for a decade on projects across the world such as implementing the environmentally supportive Hanover Principles leading up to Expo 2000 in Germany. In short, Cradle to Cradle offers an alternative to the cradle-to-grave ideology that claims inanimate products ultimately have an end date to their usefulness. 

Cradle to Cradle provides a helpful set of guiding principles, one being waste equals food. Within the book, the authors prove that waste – putting excess somewhere never to be seen again with no future consequence – is a fictional tale (McDonough & Braungart, 2002). All by-products ought to be upcycled, or transformed into new forms of high value, mimicking nature's ecological systems. Biological materials should be safely distributed into the environment, while technical materials ought to be reused infinite times. While the authors set lofty goals, their objectives can also be concrete ideals to strive towards. 

Likewise, The Upcycle shares successful case studies. For instance, they recount the story of the development of the Steelcase Think Chair, specially designed chairs that can be completely disassembled in less than 10 minutes with everyday tools. The steel and plastics can be upcycled as technical nutrients, and the fabric chair cover can be a biological nutrient for local soil. More applications can be found in organizations stretching from automobile manufacturing to construction to the US Postal Service and NASA (McDonough & Braungart, 2013). Above all, The Upcycle is a collection of stories that demonstrate the transformative power and surprising accessibility of holding cradle to cradle (C2C) ideals. 

How do Planes Impact the Natural Environment? 

By far, the most significant way an airplane emits harmful compounds to the environment is with the burning of its jet fuel, composing 98% of greenhouse gas emissions (Gaillot et al., 2023). Currently, jet fuel for big commercial airplanes is made from refined petroleum and is mixed with many hydrocarbon molecules. Unsurprisingly, jet fuel is very polluting. For every one kilometer traveled by one passenger on a fully booked long-haul commercial jet, there is 100-150 grams of Carbon dioxide (CO₂) emitted (Klöwer et al, 2021). Despite this figure being high, it is surprisingly modest compared to other forms of transport such as motor vehicles. Unlike cars however, planes release large quantities of greenhouse gases beyond just CO₂ which increases aviation's environmental damage. 

Life cycle assessments assert that non-CO₂ emissions from aircraft can amplify their effect on global warming by a multiple of around 517% over a 20 year period (Gaillot et al, 2023)

Nitrogen oxides clearly account for the largest share of this additional climate impact (Lee et al, 2021). Furthermore, contrails or the noticeable white trails that tail airplanes oftentimes form clouds that trap heat. Due to the fact that these extra gases are emitted at much higher altitudes, it intensifies the global warming effect considerably.

Runway for Cradle to Cradle 

Due to the complex, oftentimes damaging relation aviation has on the environment, it is an industry primed for a C2C design revolution. At the core of almost all emissions, is the plane engine. Typically, a commercial aircraft would employ a turbofan which accepts air, adds fuel and expels hot gases backward to create thrust forward. Recent innovations such as the high-bypass engines increase energy efficiency. These engines move air around the combustion chamber of the engine rather than through it, allowing the engine fuels to generate more thrust with less fuel. The results are less greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per passenger per kilometer found in airplanes like the Boeing 787 dreamliner, for instance. (Sheikhi et al., 2022).

However, high-bypass engines miss the point of the C2C perspective. While they partially mitigate the symptom (GHG emission), they ignore the root cause: burning of jet fuel. Airplanes waste would not equal food because harmful gases would still be emitted. 

Still, a real hope is with sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). It can be seamlessly blended with conventional jet fuel into an already functional engine and in line with cradle to cradle. (Bergero et al., 2023). Creating SAF oils required a base of non-edible crop byproducts including jatropha plant oil, palm fatty acid distillate (PFAD), palm oil mill effluent, or even used cooking oil from restaurants. Then, high-pressure hydrogen and catalysts strip oxygen atoms out of the waste oil molecules in chemical reactions. Afterwards, there are hydroprocessed esters and fatty acids that can be pumped directly into engines. Waste oil SAF is exciting because it serves as a biological nutrient for nature after usage; it mimics the biological cycles of nature. 

Can Cradle to Cradle Soar? 

Implementing available sustainable engineering such as SAF to all airplanes can subdue the greenhouse gas effect by up to 86% alone (Bergero et al., 2023). Even though SAF in many regards upholds cradle to cradle, it falls short in one area which is that its engines only accept a limited percentage of SAF. Only an engine that functions without waste and non-renewable materials would truly be in the image of cradle to cradle because it would impact the natural environment and air beneficially. No airplane engines today are officially Cradle to Cradle Certified (Cradle to Cradle Products Innovation Institute, n.d.).Within many lower-tech industries, the barrier to sustainability may lie at political will or economic factors. Aviation, though, also requires new technologies, as conventional engineers are showing diminishing returns to reaching net-zero, it is necessary to develop new innovation. For instance, new engines are being developed so that waste to food, metaphorically speaking. 

Hydrogen fuel cell aircrafts represent the greatest promise. Under this technology, an airplane would use a fuel cell, which is similar to a miniature power plant that continuously produces electricity to power the plane’s motion. Extremely cold liquid hydrogen would need to be stored on board the aircraft to enter the fuel cell along with oxygen from the environment. (Schmelcher et al. 2022). After chemical processes, the outputs of water, electricity and heat would be produced. Astonishing, this is waste equals food. This is taking the most abundant element on the periodic table to power flight. It eliminates all harmful scope one, direct carbon dioxide emissions. Furthermore, if the hydrogen is produced from renewable energy, as more hydrogen is projected to be, hydrogen fuel cell aircraft scope two or indirect emission caused from energy would also not exacerbate global warming. 

Clearly, hydrogen fuel cell aircraft are the technology that wholeheartedly archives the Cradle to Cradle principles. Even so, hydrogen fuel cells have their limitations when examining its potential applications since none are currently commercially available, unlike high bypass engines and SAF. Moreover, liquid hydrogen occupied considerably more space and mass than jet fuel tanks. Fuel-cell system poses the problem of increasing the aircraft's weight, which affects its aerodynamics especially during takeoff. 

Another appealing C2C Principle is to celebrate diverse solutions to regional or complex problems. This principle proves its practicality in aviation: an industry certainly in need of diversity to land a C2C revolution. One such solution would be to strategically develop hydrogen fuel cells for select categories of aircrafts. While SAF can fuel long-distance travel, hydrogen fuel cells can be optimized for short-haul flights. Hydrogen fuel cells can be deployed for relatively small regional and commuter aircrafts. These aircrafts require less liftoff force so the extra weight on board would be manageable. 

Current technologies such as high-bypass engines and SAF offer immediate relief to the environment. Still, realizing cradle to cradle means aviation's total environmental impact must be positive, and this requires the additional development of sweeping novel engineering such as hydrogen fuel cell aircrafts into industry leading players. Cradle to cradle is possible, but it is a marathon that calls for the entrenched aviation industry to undergo an overhaul in technology and, above all, mindset.

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