Toothpaste is essential for oral care, but the amount of plastic waste that comes with toothpaste is significant.
Most toothpaste comes in plastic tubes that cannot be recycled. So when you run out of toothpaste, the tube will always be in nature.
Every year, 1.5 billion plastic toothpaste tubes are thrown away, which take forever to break down and then turn into micro plastics. That’s 21 million kg of plastic waste per year…
As part of the 2024 Plastic-Free July events, IMU Sustainability Club partnered with Jardin Naturel to move people away from single-use plastic packaging and oral care products containing microplastic, and to promote the use of sustainable alternatives such as natural-content tablet toothpastes. For this purpose, our students from the Sustainability Club and our Sustainability Office team visited the offices and social areas at Göztepe North Campus on July 9, 2024, provided information about the environmental pollution and health risks caused by plastic packaging and microplastic-containing oral care products, and distributed natural-contented and sustainable glass-packaged toothpaste tablets to our campus community members. Thanks to this partnership, a total of 27 campus community members left their plastic-packaged toothpastes and received sustainable toothpaste tablets free of charge. Participants were informed that they could upcycle glass packaging into new products via the upcycling workshops to be held at the Sustainability Office. In addition, in order to raise awareness in the public outside of our campus community, tablet toothpaste was given to 3 more people as a result of the information and raffle made on the Instagram account of the IMU Sustainability Club and Sustainability Office on the same day.
During the event, the academic advisors of the project explained to all participants that 1.5 billion plastic toothpaste tubes are thrown away every year, and that this creates 21 million kg of plastic waste per year, as well as causing the microplastic particles in the pastes to mix with water and soil, thus polluting resources. On the other hand, it was emphasized that there is a possibility of encountering serious health risks if the microplastic particles in the pastes are swallowed.
The Jardin Naturel team, which sponsored the event, drew attention to the fact that toothpastes, which are an important part of daily personal care, should have clean content. The team, which stated that care should be taken to prevent the body from being exposed to toxic substances as much as possible while performing personal hygiene, conveyed the information that the toothpaste tablets are the waterless and therefore preservative-free version of traditional toothpastes in tubes and that the product content does not contain fluoride or SLS/SLES; thus, it contributes to the protection of public health as well as the environment.
With this social responsibility project carried out jointly by the IMU Sustainability Club and Jardin Naturel, the use of 45 single-use plastic paste tubes equivalent to 0.5 kilograms and the 450-year stay of these bottles in nature was prevented. By preventing this amount of plastic waste, 9 kg of greenhouse gas was also prevented from being released into the atmosphere. Thus, in addition to contributing to our University’s zero waste project by reducing the amount of plastic waste in our campus areas, it also contributed to the reduction of 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.
