On this year´s Earth Day, 22 April 2021, SUSTAINair organized a digital campaign to raise awareness about the circular aviation approach fostering sustainability and resilience among the stakeholders along the entire aviation supply chain.
Between 20. and 22. April 2021, SUSTAINair´s Twitter and LinkedIn were called upon to contribute to creating a multilingual word cloud. The co-creators submitted the answer to the question ‘How do you say “circular aviation” in your language?‘ on Sli.do. Their response generated a word cloud in real-time projected on the SUSTAINair website.
The results of the campaign produced a translation of the term ‘circular aviation’ in 18 languages.
To reach even greater reach, the organizers foresee a repetition of the campaign, which was organized initially only one month after the launch of the social media platforms. SUSTAINair promoted the campaign on the Earth Day 2021 official website (here) and on social media with a short video.
Stakeholder Engagement
Traditional stakeholder engagement uses public consultations, face-to-face presentations, workshops, and meetings to achieve collaborations, share information, and facilitate their responses, which impact and inform our plans.
By embracing tools like social media, the SUSTAINair project aims to raise awareness about the circular aviation approach, the project results, and keep the public informed; while soliciting inputs, generating partnerships, and growing the network of professionals and institutions with interest in the sustainable innovations.
Relevance of circular aviation approach for air transport
Air transport provides connectivity on a national, regional, and international scale for people and freight. It contributes to world trade, the promotion of tourism, and the creation of employment opportunities. Even during the COVID-19 pandemic, on the global scale, the air travel did not experience a reduction in passengers carried, according to the World Bank data from 2019. On the contrary, it experienced an increase, admittedly smaller than in a “normal” year, from 4.2. in 2018 to 4.3 billion passengers carried in 2019. The freight experienced a reduction from 21 to 15 million ton-km.
Circular Aviation: Complementing search for carbon-neutral solutions
Safe, efficient, and environmentally sustainable air traffic is in the societal best interest. Therefore, the stakeholders in the ecosystem are seeking pathways in reducing the overall aviation environmental footprint without impacting economic growth and limiting the movement of passengers.
Circular aviation is one of the pathways responding to the societal demand for sustainable aviation. Its economical and sustainable approach throughout all aspects of aviation, beyond in-flight operations, complements the search for carbon-neutral solutions to novel propulsion systems.
The circular aviation approach fosters sustainability and resilience of the aerospace ecosystem based on key enabling technologies such as advanced manufacturing, advanced materials, photonics, as well as artificial intelligence for predictive diagnostics. The expected impact of circular aviation on material resource efficiency and the reduction of fuel consumption during operations, therefore emissions, is paradigm-changing. More about SUSTAINair´s contribution to circular aviation here.