Plastic wrapping materials such as refrigerator bags and cling film used to cover food in bowls, pots and pans and to store leftover fruits and vegetables are thrown away after a single use.
Although considered recyclable, it is known that cling film, which is a thin plastic, is often thrown away without being recycled because it gets stuck in machines and causes malfunctions. Materials such as cling wrap are also used in many fields, from dry cleaning to transportation, creating a large amount of plastic waste.
As part of the Plastic-Free July 2024 events, IMU Sustainability Student Club collaborated with Mumo to encourage people to use more sustainable alternatives to cling film and refrigerator bags, which are mostly discarded in the garbage and cannot be recycled due to food residue, grease and dirt residues. To this end, students from the Sustainability Student Club and our Sustainability Office team visited the offices and social spaces at Göztepe North Campus on July 5, 2024 to provide information about the resource use, water consumption and environmental pollution caused by the use of cling film and refrigerator bags, and presented washable wax food storage fabrics to our campus community members. Thanks to this collaboration, a total of 25 campus communities stopped using cling film for food storage and received sustainable food storage fabric at no cost. In addition to our campus community, in order to raise awareness in the public, 2 more people were given wax fabrics as a result of the information and giveaway on the social media accounts of the IMU Sustainability Student Club and the Sustainability Office on the same day.
During the event, the academic advisors of the project told all participants that natural resources are consumed during the production of stretch film and underlined the consequences of this situation now and in the future. It was emphasized that the delicacy of cling films makes it difficult to recycle them, and that it is not possible to recycle contaminated, food residue or oil-contaminated products, so the consumption of these products not only consumes resources but also generates a large amount of waste. On the other hand, due to the harmful microplastics they contain, these products pose a health risk to humans and pollute water resources, as well as posing a threat to the life of marine life.
Mumo, which sponsored the event, stated that in addition to supporting domestic production, they are committed to the principles of using natural resources in the most effective and sustainable way and that they adopt sustainable production principles in the production of their products. Mumo co-founder Işınsu Kaya underlined that living in harmony with nature should be enjoyable and easy. Stating that single-use plastics cause great damage to our planet, especially environmental pollution, Kaya said that wax fabrics and pouches are very useful to remove single-use plastics from our kitchen and food system. She stated that Mumowrap, which contains organic cotton fabric, beeswax, pine resin and coconut oil, can be used up to 100 times and thus 1 piece of storage fabric prevents 100 plastics from being thrown away. Kaya defined Mumo’s vision as contributing to the local economy by making local production and thus spreading to wider areas and helping to make consumer behavior sustainability-oriented. Kaya emphasized that for a sustainable future, a better food waste system should be created and composting practices should be widespread, and fully biodegradable packaging should be used on a global scale.
With this social responsibility project carried out jointly by the IMU Sustainability Club and Mumo, 300 kilograms of plastic waste was prevented from being generated and this waste from remaining in nature for 450 years. By preventing this amount of plastic waste, 24,4 kg of greenhouse gas was prevented from being released into the atmosphere. Thus, by reducing the amount of plastic waste in our campus areas, in addition to contributing to our University’s zero waste project, it also contributed to reducing people’s environmental footprint.
The “Plastic-Free July” social responsibility project, which has been managed by IMU Sustainability Office since 2022, was carried out by IMU Sustainability Club this year. The academic consultancy of the project was undertaken by Res.Asst. Ayça ÇELİKBİLEK from IMU Sustainability Office team, who is also the academic advisor of IMU Sustainability Club, the club president Res.Asst. Furkan ERUÇAR and Lect. Zehra SAVAN.
Within the scope of the 2024 activities of the “Plastic-Free July” project, IMU Sustainability Club (IMUSUS) invited people to challenge them to remove a single-use plastic product they use in their daily lives every day for a month and step into a plastic-free life. During the challenge, environmental awareness was raised by providing information about the waste generation and environmental pollution caused by these plastic products every day through social media accounts. Following each of these informative social media posts, people were presented with sustainable alternatives with natural ingredients and packaging that do not produce plastic waste, which they could use instead of that plastic-containing product. IMUSUS also collaborated with 18 companies in Turkey and the world that are pioneers in sustainability and have sustainability labels in order to carry this awareness to consumer behavior. Thanks to this cooperation, on certain days of the challenge, with the sponsorship support provided by the companies, sustainable products were presented to both our students and staff and the public in order to create a new behavioral change in their daily lives. Thus, while enabling people to take the first step towards a plastic-free life, it also contributed to reducing the amount of single-use plastic waste and the environmental footprint of our campus community.
“Plastic-Free July” movement has been celebrated around the world since 2011, challenging people to eliminate single-use plastic products from their lives by raising awareness about plastic pollution and the amount of plastic they use.
