Southwest Airlines Switches To Bamboo Cups, Wood Stir Sticks

If you’re a frequent Southwest Airlines flyer, you may notice some changes to the inflight service on your next flight.

Southwest tries to reduce single-use plastics from inflight service

Southwest Airlines is switching some of its service items to reduce single-use plastics. Specifically, the airline has started serving cold beverages in bamboo cups, and has started offering wood stir sticks with the carrier’s iconic Heart branding:

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• The new cup is made from 93% non-plastic materials, with a pulp blending 75% bamboo and 25% paper, and a polyethylene lining
• The new stir stick is made from 100% birch wood

The Dallas-based carrier expects the new items to reduce inflight single-use plastics by more than 1.5 million pounds annually. The airline is continuing to explore new sourcing initiatives to address single-use plastic packaging across inflight operations.

This is only the carrier’s latest initiative. In July 2024, Southwest transitioned to a paper overwrap for its napkins, made from 100% post-consumer recycled materials, fully eliminating plastic from this service item.

Meanwhile in the coming months, Southwest will introduce a new select-a-snack offering on flights to and from Hawaii, which will decrease food waste and reduce single-use plastic packaging by at least 18,000 pounds annually. There aren’t more details about that yet, though I’m curious how exactly this will eliminate food waste.

Here’s how Helen Giles, Southwest’s Managing Director of Environmental Sustainability, describes this initiative.

“We expect our new bamboo cold cup, wood stir stick, and other initiatives to exceed our goal to reduce plastics from inflight service by 50% by weight by 2025, and we’re excited to continue collaborating with our suppliers to work toward our goal of fully eliminating, where feasible, single-use plastics from inflight service by 2030. It’s been a year of work since we announced our Nonstop to Net Zero strategy, including our initiatives to tackle single-use plastics in our inflight service. Today’s announcement celebrates the hard work and dedication of many Teams across Southwest to meet these goals.”

This seems like an all-around positive change

Based on the reports that I’ve seen so far, the new cups seem to be pretty sturdy, and hold a comparable amount of liquid to the old cups. So this development seems positive to me, since it’s an easy change that’s good for the environment.

I would assume Southwest goes through more cups than any other US airline, based on how many flights the airline operates. Southwest isn’t the first US airline to make a change like this.

In early 2023, Alaska eliminated plastic cups, instead transitioning to paper cups. This is an area where Alaska has been leading in general, from switching to boxed water, to even trialing reusable cups (though I doubt that goes anywhere, at least for the time being).

Bottom line

Southwest Airlines hopes to eliminate 1.5 million pounds of plastic annually by transitioning from plastic cups and stir sticks to bamboo cups and wood stir sticks. This seems like a sensible change that’s a win-win. Admittedly this is minor in the scheme of the environmental footprint of the airline industry, but every little bit helps.

What do you make of Southwest switching to bamboo cups and wood stir straws?