Airports go for green with eco-friendly efforts

The airport also will install garbage and recycling compactors later in the fall and will begin weighing trash and charging concessionaires by the pound for removal. The airport will not charge for hauling recycled waste.

Denver, which will begin a composting trial in January for biodegradable wastes, already has 22 streams of trash collection and recycling. Last year, it collected more than 104,000 pounds of cooking oil that was reused for biodiesel fuel and manufacturing pet foods.

Denver has also found a way to reuse its bountiful snow and de-icing fluid used on aircraft during harsh winter conditions. The airport collected about 70% of the 1.8 million gallons of de-icing fluids used last year and mixed some of it with melted snow. The mixed fluid, which is piped to an on-site collection pond, is then reused as antifreeze or flushing fluids in toilets.

Minneapolis-St. Paul has spent $150 million in storm water management and de-icing-fluid recycling, including five large de-icing pads that are about 15 acres each.

Cleaner vehicles.

Prodded by rules and financial incentives, a growing number of airports are banning diesel shuttles and urging taxi companies to buy more alternative-fuel vehicles.

Mineta San Jose says it has fully converted all of its 34 shuttles to run on compressed natural gas and has eliminated the use of more than 1.3 million gallons of diesel fuel since 2003.

Boston also encourages cleaner driving for passengers by providing preferred parking to those who drive to the airport in hybrid cars. It also doles out front-of-the-line privileges up to two times a day for taxis with cleaner fuel, a program modeled after one at San Francisco International.

"There are too many rental-car or hotel shuttles at airports with just two or three passengers in them," Howards says. "They're traveling billboards."

Airfield.

Green practices are also seeping into the airfield. Boston Logan will be the first U.S. airport to reduce toxic emissions by using runway asphalt heated at a lower temperature — 250 to 275 degrees, up to 75 degrees lower than is required for traditional "hot mix" asphalt.

Logan's Sleiman says warm mix uses 20% less energy to make, produces 20% fewer greenhouse emissions when applied and lets the airport use a higher percentage of recycled asphalt pavement in the final product. If the asphalt performs as expected, the airport will use it for future paving projects, he says.

Meanwhile, gate electrification is becoming an industry standard practice. Each gate is equipped with a 400-hertz electrical connection that allows parked aircraft to shut off the engine, thus saving jet fuel, and still run lighting and other avionics. Another practice of saving jet fuel at gates that is growing in popularity is to pump in preconditioned air from the terminal to the aircraft. Large tubes extend from the terminal to the aircraft belly, delivering air conditioning to passengers so that the aircraft's air conditioning systems can be turned off.