The Transportation Safety Administration banned liquids from carry-on bags exactly three years ago this week, forcing millions of travelers to check their luggage or throw away perfectly good bottled drinks and toiletries before boarding.

Those discarded items have created mountains of waste for the country's airports and added thousands of dollars in extra garbage hauling fees and other expenses for each site. At the Portland International Airport, for example, that added up to roughly $75,000 a year.

There was also an environmental cost: Half-empty drink bottles often ended up in the trash instead of the recycling bin. Those half-filled bottles also added more weight to airports' overall waste, driving up the cost to haul it away. According to the Environment Report, checkpoint waste collection at in the Houston Airport System grew 70 percent after the ban was introduced, while garbage weight at Seattle's Sea-Tac Airport increased by 25 percent.

So Portland International Airport tested out a new program that allows passengers to pour liquids into collection bins that are then dumped into the sewer system. Passengers can then either toss the empty bottles in the recycling bin or take them along through security and refill with fountain water on the other side.

The initiative has saved the airport $30,000 in disposal costs in six months, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Wednesday.

Those results have caught the eye of Rosemarie Andolino, Chicago's Department of Aviation Commissioner, who this week pitched the idea of implementing a similar program at the city's O'Hare and Midway airports to slash the amount of waste it pays to haul off to a landfill.

The Chicago Airport system has several environmental efforts in place, such as a green roof at O'Hare airport and an ultra low sulfur diesel fuel requirement for construction vehicles, but there's nothing like potential cost savings to make the business case for a green initiative.
"What Portland was doing was allowing them to dump the water out, take the empty bottle with them through security. They can re-fill it on the other side or dispose of it in a recycling bin. This way, reduce the amount they pay for garbage disposal.

That's something we're … looking at implementing sooner rather than later." -- Aviation Commissioner Rosemarie Andolino, Chicago Sun-Times
Image CC licensed by Flickr user ella novak.