Southwest’s Air Transport World Eco-Aviation Award is a Lesson for Us All

 
This is going to be a quickie, but I hope it drives home a very important point that we could all benefit from.

Southwest Airlines just won an Eco-Aviation Award from Air Transport World (ATW) Magazine today. Southwest was named “the Eco-Pioneer of the Year for the airline’s focus on efficiency long before environmentally-sound business practices were understood or recognized.”

That point about Southwest focusing on efficiency long before it was popular was probably for one obvious reason — energy efficiency saves money! Southwest, from my lifelong impression of the airline, has always been focused on saving money in every way it can. Rather than doing so to help the world or doing so to create a greener image of itself, I imagine Southwest was a pioneer in focusing on efficiency because it realized that was a fiscally intelligent thing to do.

As just pointed out in Sunrun’s funny new videos and my article on “solar = money for you” last month, going green is often helpful for putting more green in your wallet or bank account as well. (Makes sense, since it is essentially about using our resources more wisely.) This also goes for riding transit (saves money), bicycling (saves money), and, of course, buying energy-efficient technologies and appliances.

Kudos to Southwest for its efficiency and fiscal wisdom, and I’m happy that helps the environment too, since that helps to cut our health costs, disaster costs, and costs inflicted upon so many creatures around the world and generations to come from the burning of fossil fuels that should really stay in the ground.

Source: Southwest
Image Credit: PR Newswire