Every year, the Lufthansa Group sorts out Economy Class seat covers made of fabric because they are too dirty or worn out. If these discarded covers were to be spread out, they would cover an area the size of about three football pitches. Although the covers are washed and reused several times, their lifespan is exhausted after around five washes and two years. This problem calls for a more sustainable solution.

The ‘CirculAir’ project

In order to tackle challenges such as these, an internal Lufthansa Group (LHG) talent programme offers employees the opportunity to work on sustainability issues and develop solutions in project teams alongside their regular jobs.

The employees worked in various so-called “Explorers” teams on projects that were evaluated after a year by a high-ranking jury, including members of the management. Some of the promising ideas then received the necessary financial support for their realisation. One of these teams has set itself the task of giving old fabric seat covers a new lease of life and thus reducing the considerable amount of waste under the project name ‘CirculAir’.

The idea

The five-strong team, consisting of three colleagues from SWISS and one colleague each from Austrian Airlines and Lufthansa Technik, has a clear target: To recycle and reuse the high-quality, hard-wearing seat cover material in a sustainable recycling process and make it usable again. The vision behind this is to establish a closed-loop system for a more sustainable cabin concept in aviation. In this system, for example, old seat covers could be recycled into individual fibres and then processed into new seat covers, which could then be used on board again.

However, process is complex and as the team is looking for an immediate result, a more pragmatic solution was initially found. The Swiss company Texaid is partnering with SWISS and Edelweiss to downcycle the seat covers and convert them into insulation material for building insulation. Texaid is one of the largest organisations in Europe for the collection, sorting and recycling of used textiles.

During the recycling process the original fibres, such as cotton, are recovered so they can then be used for new products. Downcycling is when the material is converted into new products for a second use, in this case cleaning cloths or insulation material, for example.

Challenges of downcycling

The biggest hurdle in producing new seat covers from recycled material lies in the reusability of the fibres and the strict certification guidelines for the new fabric. In addition, the fire-retardant treatment commonly used in aviation and the fabric mix of wool and nylon make recycling more difficult. For this reason, the team works closely with textile manufacturers and specialised laboratories for the circular economy to analyse the fibres down to the smallest detail and research various solutions.

A fraying test, the first step in a mechanical recycling process in which the material is frayed into the finest fibres, has shown that the seat cover material is suitable for fraying and subsequent spinning into insulating material. The knowledge gained from the seat covers could also be applied to other textile cabin elements such as curtains, carpets and seat belts in the future.

The first milestone

Since this summer 2024, the downcycling process has been firmly integrated in the regular workflows at SWISS Technics. As a result, we expect to avoid around 1.4 tonnes of waste every year at SWISS and Edelweiss alone. The next step will be to analyse how the insights gained at SWISS can be transferred to the other airlines in the Lufthansa Group in order to achieve an even broader impact.

Processes already implemented for other textiles

The idea of recycling and downcycling was already applied to other textiles last year. Damaged non-reusable textiles such as blankets, pyjamas, pillowcases, napkins, tablecloths and headrest covers are collected at the end of their life cycle by our caterer Gate Gourmet in Zurich and regularly handed over to Texaid. There, the materials are sorted to decide whether they can be recycled or downcycled.