Airline Food Trays: A little design saves a lot...

Airlines are a design area where a little change can have a big impact, because every product gets multiplied by millions of passengers and by the fuel cost to repeatedly lift that weight to 30,000 feet. With that in mind, MAP's redesign of Virgin Atlantic's food trays stand to save the company quite a bit: shrinking the tray by a third and reusing it for multiple courses, and using a non-slip material that eliminates the need for disposable paper liners, the overall weight of the service setup is reduced by 291lbs per plane. There are quite a few other details to the design, discussed in Wired and Gizmodo articles - worth a quick read!