Bloomberg News: Holiday Air Travel Is Easier With a Handbook – November 21, 2024
Excerpt: You can finally fly with (almost) no clothes
The grim environmental effects of flying were weighing on Miho Moriya. “I love to travel but also felt guilty about using flights that produce CO2,” says the 40-year-old accountant based in Japan. So when her employer, Japanese trading house Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc., held its annual entrepreneurship competition in 2019, she pitched an idea that could make a tiny dent: a clothing-rental service for travelers. Instead of flyers hauling luggage—the weight adding to a plane’s carbon emissions—they could borrow clothes on the ground.
The idea became Any Wear, Anywhere, part of a venture between Sumitomo and Japan Airlines Co. Travelers arriving in Japan can now rent clothing for as little as $31 for up to two weeks, delivered to their hotel. The online service, more for the utilitarian-minded than the fashionista, rents sets—including perhaps three pairs of pants, three tops and a couple of jackets—all secondhand or sourced from overstock to keep with the eco-friendly vibe. It offers seven size options for adults and nine for children, with sweaters and jeans for winter and shorts and T-shirts for summer.
The service is currently available only in Japan, which happens to be enjoying a tourism boom. But traveling entirely suitcase-free is still just an aspiration: Shoes, underwear, PJs and toiletries aren’t yet part of the pitch. Moriya, who left her job in accounting to help operate Any Wear, Anywhere as its project leader, says going green feels good, but traveling without carrying luggage is even better. “My ultimate dream,” she says, “is making it possible to travel anywhere in the world hands-free.” —Supriya Singh
#
Japan Airlines Will Rent You Clothes (Bizarre Sustainability Initiative) – One Mile at a Time
Excerpt By Ben Schlappig:
Japan Airlines’ new clothing-sharing service
Japan Airlines has teamed up with Sumitomo Corporation to launch a trial of a clothing sharing service, which is called “Any Wear, Anywhere.” The idea is that foreign tourists and business travelers landing in Japan on JAL will be able to rent clothes for their trip, meaning they just have to bring their underwear and socks.
Here’s how JAL describes the concept behind this service:
With more and more people flying again after the COVID-19 pandemic, and with the recent emphasis in sustainability, there is a growing movement around the world to promote sustainable tourism. Travelers increasingly desire to make more sustainable choices regarding their travel destinations, accommodations, transportation, etc., they still lack sufficient options. For example, most travelers now enjoy eating at restaurants and staying at hotels at their destination, but they generally bring their own clothing from home.
The concept of the Service is therefore to provide a travel experience with minimal luggage by offering clothing rentals at the destination, thereby creating environmental value. By expanding the use of the Service, we aim to create an environment where travelers can use local options for all aspects of their clothing, food, and accommodation, transforming travel and business trips into more sustainable experiences. In providing the Service, Sumitomo Corporation will be responsible for developing the reservation system as well as for the procurement, laundering, and delivery of clothes. All clothing items available for rent will be obtained from excess stock of apparel and pre-owned clothing, thereby promoting the concept of a circular economy. JAL will monitor changes in passengers’ checked-in baggage weight and verify the reduction effect of carbon dioxide emissions by reduced airplane weight due to use of the Service.
- You can reserve your clothes online prior to your trip, selecting the clothing set that best suits the season and purpose of your visit
- You’ll need to enter your Japan Airlines booking reference, the date of pickup and return, and information about your destination where you intend to pick up and drop off your clothing set; you’ll need to make a payment in advance, and reserve your clothes at least one month prior to your trip
- You’ll then fly Japan Airlines to Japan with less baggage, and can pick up and return your clothing set at the hotel; the return date for clothes must be within two weeks
- …
- Here’s how it works:
- You can reserve your clothes online prior to your trip, selecting the clothing set that best suits the season and purpose of your visitYou’ll need to enter your Japan Airlines booking reference, the date of pickup and return, and information about your destination where you intend to pick up and drop off your clothing set; you’ll need to make a payment in advance, and reserve your clothes at least one month prior to your tripYou’ll then fly Japan Airlines to Japan with less baggage, and can pick up and return your clothing set at the hotel; the return date for clothes must be within two weeks
How JAL’s shared clothing service worksLooking at the selection, there are a variety of categories, including choosing casual or smart casual, selecting summer, winter, or spring/fall, and picking how many tops and bottoms you want. Pricing per collection is ¥5,000-7000 (~$35-50), and that includes the cost of shipping.Japan Airlines shared clothing selection
Japan Airlines shared clothing selectionBen Schlappig comments: Is this clothes sharing concept brilliant or silly?While it’s great that sustainability is a more important topic in the airline industry nowadays, personally this seems to me like an initiative where the juice isn’t worth the squeeze, so to speak.First there are the complicated logistics. You have to request these outfits at least a month in advance, and can only rent them for periods of two weeks. Furthermore, while you can select a clothing set in advance, it’s anyone’s guess if they end up fitting right, or what they actually look like on you. Never mind the potential risk of irregular operations, leaving you stranded at another airport without a change of clothes.I understand where the initiative is coming from, in the sense that carrying extra weight on planes burns a bit more fuel. But honestly, how much could these clothing sets really weigh? The biggest set has nine pieces of clothing, so does that maybe weigh 10 pounds? Let’s say 5% of people on a Japan Airlines Boeing 787-8 use this service (that number seems way too high, but let’s just pretend). That would mean nine people use the service, and that’s a weight reduction of 90 pounds, on a plane with a maximum takeoff weight of over 500,000 pounds. What kind of fuel savings are we talking about here — a couple of liters of gas?Maybe I’m in the minority, but I just don’t see how this concept makes sense. And that doesn’t even account for the concept of having to wear clothing styles you wouldn’t necessarily otherwise want to wear at home. Heck, next time I go to Japan, maybe I’ll just take the JAL pajamas off the plane and wear those for my whole trip.Bottom lineJapan Airlines is trialing a new concept whereby you can rent clothes for your trip to Japan in advance. You can choose based on how many pieces you want, and the clothes will be delivered to your hotel. This is intended as an environmental initiative, so that you can travel lighter, reducing the amount of luggage you have (and in turn, reducing aircraft fuel burn ever-so-slightly).While this is a unique concept, I don’t see it gaining much traction.
#
Excerpt:
One of the most stressful things about traveling is having to pack. But what if all you had to do was book your flight and the packing part — choosing, organizing, folding and making the clothes fit in your suitcase — came with your airline ticket?
Japan Airlines (JAL) is taking the term “packing light” to a new level with its new clothing rental service, “Any Wear, Anywhere.” The service provides international travelers with the option to rent sets of clothing from a range of choices, starting at a little over $27 for two bottoms and three tops, reported Travel + Leisure.
…
Multiple sets of seasonal clothing are available for rental in a range of sizes, from casual to smart casual or a combination of both, provided by Wefabrik. Travelers may rent as many as eight outfits for up to two weeks. The service is intended to reduce the weight of baggage and reduce carbon emissions, as well as save travelers hassle and time packing and laundering their own clothing. It also allows them to try on new styles without the pressure of buying them.
…
“Travelers increasingly desire to make more sustainable choices regarding their travel destinations, accommodations, transportation etc., they still lack sufficient options. For example, most travelers now enjoy eating at restaurants and staying at hotels at their destination, but they generally bring their own clothing from home,” the press release said.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Again proving that numeracy isn’t a warmunist strong point.
Some quick math. The checked bag weight limit is usually 50# before hefty penalty fees. The typical airline passenger weighs between 130 (female) and say 190 (male), so more than 3x a checked bag. So the clothing in baggage comprises less than 1/4 the plane load weight. So it saves a miniscule amount of CO2, contrary to the guilty feelings of those flying. Especially when considering that jet exhaust is more than half water—proven by contrails.
People who travel, typically pack more than just clothes.
Cargo, especially transpacific, is massively more profitable per unit of weight or volume than personal luggage.
How then to pitch this as good policy ? Simple ! Advise that green behavior with less baggage will save the planet….while making more volume available for cargo at very lucrative rates per kg or m3.
This IS an economic issue, NOT an ideological concern. To say this is a climate-related concern is massively disingenuous. (That’s a big word for “liar”.)
Yes. Like hotels claiming to save the world by not changing towels or sheets unless you insist.
Simply cost cutting measures dressed up for the dumb.
Excellent point. They will still load the planes to their maximum weight limit to maximize the profit.
Yes. Few people realise how much freight is carried by commercial airlines. In the UK Heathrow Airport is the country’s largest ‘port’ by value with a network of over 2018 destinations worldwide. The vast majority of the freight (80%+) is carried in the belly hold of passenger flights
Your math assumes the volume of baggage, not just the weight, reduces. I have one suitcase. Whether it is full, half full, or empty, it remains the same size.
Weight on wheel would be reduced by this novel clothing approach, and that weight can be used for cargo if there is available space.
Ultimately, your point to added airline profit is valid. I merely nit pick a detail.
Actually it is FAR less than 1/4. The plane’s empty weight is a huge number, plus the weight of the fuel, non baggage cargo, water for the lavatories, food, etc. So compared to the weight that has to be carried by the wings and engine power, the passenger baggage is a teensy fraction of the total weight. See this analysis by the FAA:
https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/regulations_policies/policy_guidance/benefit_cost/econ-value-section-6-perf-factors.pdf
Notice the charts of fig 6-1 of a Gulfstream GIV a business jet with a 500 pound weight penalty. The total flight consumed 6478 lbs of fuel without the 500 pound penalty and 6520 lbs of fuel with the 500 pound penalty, for a savings of 42 lbs of fuel. And that is for a takeoff weight of roughly 65,000 lbs.
Furthermore, a 70 knot headwind will add about 15 minutes to the mission time, eating an extra 630 lbs of fuel. And a 70 knot tailwind reducing the time and fuel burned by a similar amount. So merely whether you are flying east or west can be 15 to 30 times more fuel burned than eliminating the baggage weight. This notion of eliminating baggage weight is the epitome of stupid.
When the terrorist bomb threats on airplanes were prominent in many news outlets back in the 2000s, it was suggested that all passengers be required to strip off naked, and be fitted with transparent plastic overalls to prevent hiding any explosives on their person.
My adolescent nephew’s reaction was – “what if I got a stiffy?”
This, to him, was a vastly more dire situation than being held hostage by a terrorist bomber.
“ “what if I got a stiffy?””
Don’t worry young lad, no-one will notice !!
Cruel!
“I didn’t realise it was that COLD that day”
Ron White commenting on his holiday river boating pics in his swimwear.
A cynic would say … airline uses less fuel = more profit; airline rents clothes = more profit.
Seems like a potentially clever way to increase the bottom line under the guide of “saving the world from climate change”. Just sayin’ …
Yes. Plus lighter baggage for travelers. Not all bad.
Remember back when our suitcase weight allowance was 32 kgs?
Then it got reduced to ~ 23 kgs.
Even though the baggage handlers had all put on about 20 kgs in weight in the intervening time 🙂
Mechanization can be beneficial to humans in lots of ways, reducing physical effort.
But not in all applications 🙁
Those were the days when your suitcase weighed 10kg empty. Depending on the ‘class’ of your airline ticket you can still get a lot more than 20kg per ticket.
Most people today have roller bags and do not carry them. Not a plus.
Somewhere, somehow, the travelers are getting fleeced, no doubt.
Save even more by travelling in nude class…
I dunno- might result in too much turbulence. 🙂
🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣 At my age, it is ‘smooth sailing’, darn it!
Us savvy travelers know how and what to pack. Island of Hawaii? There’s a Goodwill not far from the airport down the street from the Costco.
Anyways. Airliner fuel expenses are mostly about punching a hole through the air. The energy to lift mass to altitude has a cost but not nearly as much. This is about the world being forced into “you will own nothing and like it.”
“you will wear nothing and like it.”
The Emperor has no clothes.
Funny thing is, there are clothing free air travel, usually a charter flight.
I expect the clothing will be made entirely from cotton or wool. No oil-derivative fibers for you. Just what to use for the elastic in your undies must be a subject of intense research.
Hemp! Your undies will have a hemp rope drawstring. And you will love it!
Especially if the hemp is of the cannabis variety.
Wool. Cotton has a CO2 and NO impact since it is a plant.
Wait. Cotton. Wool has a methane impact.
Best just go without wearing anything.
Can they get any crazier?
Yes.. they are quite capable of that.
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about th’universe!” ~ (attrib) A Einstein
Please don’t tempt them.
I find this concept creepy to say the least.
Why would I want the added stress of wearing clothes I hadn’t previously tried on, that might be ugly, ill-fitting, and dowdy? No thanks. I can’t any self-respecting woman opting for this.
I once stayed at the Fairmont in Vancouver, the concierge shopped for us and brought back a range of what we were looking for, to try out. We tried out in our hotel room, selected what we wanted, and the rest was returned to the original stores … I kid you not!
This is stupid.
But it’s ‘Green’ !!!
What did you expect ??
So all of the clothing will be green (color)?
Actually, i sort of like it. Schlepping bags is one of the most disagreeable parts of travel.
Dunno. Done my fair share of schlepping. Almost 4 million miles and lifetime exec platinum on AA, plus a million miles on United. (After all the vacation mile freebies previously deducted for stuff like family winter ski vacations for four, or my and Patricia’s 2007 four day trip to Switzerland on private business.) And that also doesn’t count the several years I flew Motorola Air almost exclusively except for international—even our then G4 did not suffice Chicago—Singapore.
Got bag packing down to a science. Carry on only for 5 working day trips. Checked bag only for more than a work week. (Longest single consulting career trip was a three week around the world adventure as global practice leader on a practice training trip—Chicago to SD to SF to Tokyo to Melbourne to Sidney to Frankfurt to Paris to London to NY to Boston then finally back to Chi home.) Both bags are sophisticated compartmented design Hartmann—still very serviceable after decades of baggage handling abuse (ok, finally a single broken zipper pull tab after last month’s trip to visit daughter and family in Colorado—thanks, United DIA.)
A helpful trick is to carefully use hotel laundry and ironing services iff a two day stop. Overnight proved just too unreliably risky even with mid-upper tier hotel chains like Weston.
Last year we did 3 summer months in the Med and US with bags packed for 8-days and a 7-day laundry cycle. Airlines wanted to know if we had anything other than cabin-checked luggage and USA Customs wanted to know how and why we travelled so light. 🙂
Ha! Sounds like you should include the GWP of Perc dry cleaning fluid in your air transportation CO2 footprint calc.
A schlepper is as schlepper does.
Less luggage, more freight. And they might make a few yen charging for rental clothes.
I haven’t flown since December 20-0-0. If a frequently in the air person cares about their “carbon footprint” {I don’t}, why not stay home? One can do a vacation after the business trip. Or send me $100 + a small fee and I will not cut a growing tree, or I will plant a Ponderosa Pine in your name. Your choice. A certificate similar to the one in the link but in your name and signed by me will be sent. 🤠
But then the rental clothes have to be flown to their destinations, no net gain.
This is not an altogether bad idea if you can simply renew your wardrobe weekly.
My wife and me are avid international travellers. Our single biggest casual outgoing on our travels is laundry costs. In the EU, we pay an average of EU250.00 per week for the two of us to have our clothes washed, folded and returned to our hotel room. On board cruises it has been substantially more than this amount.
Before anybody suggests finding local coin-laundries, we’d rather be doing our tourist thing than hanging around the laundry.
And overnight laundry services likely use perchloroethylene solvent, actually 70% of dry cleaning services still do….since the benefits of it’s greasy food stain solvent characteristics exceed problems with its GWP restrictions.
Full metal retard
This service generates also CO2 output. You have a delivery service but also need personal who travels to work, heat the building and other things, in the end you might have more CO2. All green solutions are worse than the cause.
In fact, any “green” activity purportedly meant to reduce CO2 also generates CO2, be it EVs, solar. wind, methane reducing cow pill,… anything. Any action has carbon footprint. The real purpose of it of course is not to reduce CO2, but to create more “green” business for oneself.
I have my own startup based on this one, but blows it away! It’s called Anywhere, Any Aware. Instead of actually travelling to Japan, you simply rent a person in Japan to go to the gate area in the airport, and go through all of the motions you would have (except for picking up luggage, which wouldn’t exist), and doing all of the sightseeing you would have done had you been there. Your proxy can experience all of the wonders of Japan at your expense, without you ever having to leave your sofa! I am capitalizing this with a Go Fund Yourself campaign, with a goal of – what – seven – no, wait, twelve million American dollars. Get in on the ground floor while there’s still time.
Any way you look at it, the clothes had to be transported to the destination, either the passenger’s or the pre-positioned clothing. Thus no net reduction in carbon emissions.
Question 1: What’s the cost of an overweight bag or an additional bag compared to the cost of the clothing rental?
Question 2: How can one be sure the rental clothing have been properly and effectively cleaned, and include sanitized.
I can see this as a super spread in the next pandemic.
Question 3: Given weeks in advance reservation, what recourse does the customer have it the clothing is torn or has holes, missing buttons, or whatever?
Question 4: What if your clothes do not arrive? What then?
“The grim environmental effects of flying were weighing on Miho Moriya. “I love to travel but also felt guilty about using flights that produce CO2,” says the 40-year-old accountant based in Japan.”
Then don’t fly.
Oh, and also get a real STEM education.
for as little as $31 for up to two weeks
rents sets—including perhaps three pairs of pants, three tops and a couple of jackets
Read the fine print. If you want a fresh shirt as most of us do every day for 2 weeks, you will need to rent 5 sets for a total of $155.
How many are going to arrive with 3 changes of clothing rented and realize they have a problem?
I like the sound of this idea a lot, and I don’t give a toss how much CO2 it does or doesn’t save. Not having to lug about a huge heavy suitcase for a two week holiday is worth it to me, plus I wouldn’t have to queue to check in at the airport. So long as there’s no mixup with size, and it’s all waiting for me in the hotel when I check in, I’m totally on board with this idea.
It’s almost like they are not entirely enjoying that tourism boom and deliberately make it inconvenient for the virtue signalling Seattliddles, huh. But this cannot be.
Well, it’s just what people need when airline loses the luggage containing clothes for business meeting or wedding.
:-o)