IMU Sustainability Club Draws Attention to Environmental Pollution and Global Warming Caused by Plastic Beverage Bottles and Gifts Vegan Cold Coffee in Tin Packaging in Collaboration with Nilky
IMU Sustainability Club Draws Attention to Environmental Pollution and Global Warming Caused by Plastic Beverage Bottles and Gifts Vegan Cold Coffee in Tin Packaging in Collaboration with Nilky
Globally, 1500 plastic bottles are thrown away every second. About 9% of plastic bottles are recycled.
While plastic bottles can be recycled, the world’s six largest beverage companies use an average of 6.6% recycled plastic in their packaging, and a third have no plans to increase their use of recycled plastic, and none are considering using 100% recycled plastic in their packaging.
Glass bottles and cans, which we can choose instead of plastic, can be recycled many times over. We should make our choice accordingly.
As part of the Plastic-Free July 2024 events, IMU Sustainability Club collaborated with Nilky to discourage people from consuming drinks served in plastic bottles and to promote the consumption of sustainably packaged drinks such as glass and cans. To this end, students from the Sustainability Club and our Sustainability Office team visited the offices and social areas at Göztepe North Campus on July 29, 2024, to provide information about the environmental pollution caused by the consumption of beverages in plastic bottles and to present Nilky vegan cold coffee with tin packaging made of aluminum, a recyclable material, to our campus community members. Thanks to this collaboration, a total of 200 campus community members gave up consuming beverages in plastic bottles and received Nilky’s tin-packaged vegan cold coffees free of charge. In addition, 40 campus community members who visited our office during the event were also served vegan coffee. Finally, in order to raise awareness in the public as well as our campus community, 10 more people were given Nilky vegan cold coffees on the same day as a result of the giveaway on the social media accounts of the IMU Sustainability Club and the Sustainability Office.
During the event, the project’s academic advisors informed all participants that 1500 single-use plastic bottles are thrown away every second in the world, 80% of which end up in landfills, while only 9% can be recycled. Noting that each plastic bottle takes about 1,000 years to degrade in nature and leaches harmful chemicals into our environment in the process, the team explained that although plastic bottles can be recycled, the world’s six largest beverage companies use an average of 6.6% recycled plastic in their packaging, one-third have no plans to increase their use of recycled plastic, and none of them plan to use 100% recycled plastic in their packaging. It was emphasized that glass and tin cans, which we can prefer instead of plastic, which has a huge negative environmental impact, especially in aquatic ecosystems, can be recycled many times over and are much more sustainable.
Nilky, the event sponsor, stated that they are committed to the principles of protecting natural resources and ethical production processes and that they adopt sustainable production principles that aim to reduce the carbon footprint by avoiding the methods used to produce animal products. However, the company pointed out that in addition to corporate sustainability principles for sustainable living, consumer behavior should also be sustainability-oriented, and emphasized that at this point, they aim to create an incentive by gifting their users tin-packaged beverage products, which constitute a sustainable alternative to plastic packaged products. In this context, the Nilky team explained that one of the biggest causes of global warming is the large number of cows, the water they consume and the area used to grow the food they eat, and that people around the world have switched to plant-based (vegan) eating and drinking habits with the increase in awareness about this problem. Nilky, Turkey’s first modern vegan beverage brand established with the desire to create a product that contributes to the solution of this problem in our country, underlined that they aim to reduce the environmental impact of their consumers by preferring recyclable packaging such as carton and tin for their products against plastic pollution, which is another major problem.
With this social responsibility project carried out jointly by IMU Sustainability Club and Nilky, 4 kg of plastic waste was avoided, while preventing these wastes from remaining in nature for more than 200 years. With the prevention of this amount of plastic waste, 16 kg of greenhouse gases were prevented from being released into the atmosphere. Thus, by reducing the amount of plastic waste in our campus areas, we not only contributed to the zero waste project of our University, but also contributed to reducing the environmental footprint of individuals.
The “Plastic-Free July” social responsibility project, which has been managed by the IMU Sustainability Office since 2022, was carried out by the IMU Sustainability Club this year. The academic consultancy of the project was undertaken by Res.Asst. Ayça ÇELİKBİLEK from the IMU Sustainability Office team, who is also the academic advisor of the 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) challenged people 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 particular plastic-containing product. IMUSUS has collaborated with 18 companies in Turkey and the world that are pioneers in sustainability and have sustainable product labels in order to channel this awareness to consumer behavior. Thanks to this collaboration, on certain days of the challenge, with the sponsorship support provided by the companies, sustainable products were presented to our students, 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.
The “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 plastics they use.
