See the accompanying photo of the Indianapolis Airport, circa the 1950s? Well, the airport in Indiana is today much less black and white, and much more green.

The recently opened new $1.1 billion Indianapolis International Airport boasts a slew of improvements that, if they don’t make airline travel truly eco-friendly, do help to reduce its environmental footprint. Features at the new airport include:

• Low-e glass roofs and walls that minimise the need for artificial lighting during the day while preventing the interior space from taking in too much heat;
• Low-flow plumbing throughout the facility;
• Channels alongside aprons and taxiways that collect the glycol used to deice airplanes (the runoff is then filtered and the glycol recycled);
• A layout that reduces airline taxi times, helping to save about $12 million in fuel expenses each year; and
• Native planting and transitional green zones for absorbing and filtering airport runoff.

Designer Ripley Rasmus tells Triple Pundit the new airport is the first “sustainable, post-911, greenfield airport” in the U.S.

How sustainable air travel actually is is highly debatable, but if you’ve got to fly, every little bit counts, I guess.

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