Using plastic cutlery may be easy and cheap, but it does more harm than good to our environment.
Plastic cutlery cannot be recycled and is often thrown away. According to scientists, it takes about 200 years for plastic forks, knives and spoons to decompose, and this is only possible under strong sunlight.
Over time, the compounds reach the soil and water, poisoning plants and animals. The entire food chain can be poisoned by the improper disposal of plastic alone. We can prevent this.
As part of the Plastic-Free July 2024 events, IMU Sustainability Student Club collaborated with Bimspack to encourage people to use more sustainable alternatives to plastic cutlery, which cannot be recycled due to food waste, oil 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 10, 2024 to provide information about the resource use, water consumption and environmental pollution caused by the use of single-use plastic cutlery and presented biodegradable wooden cutlery sets to our campus community members. Thanks to this collaboration, a total of 50 campus communities stopped using plastic cutlery and received biodegradable wooden cutlery sets free of charge. In addition to our campus community, in order to raise awareness in the public, 10 more people received wooden cutlery sets 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 emphasized to all participants that natural resources are consumed during the production of single-use plastics and the consequences of this situation now and in the future. It was emphasized that plastic cutlery cannot be recycled due to food residue or oil contamination, so the consumption of these products not only consumes resources but also generates a large amount of plastic 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 by mixing into water resources.
Bimspack, which sponsored the event, stated that they continue to work with zero carbon footprint, zero chemical and zero waste policy by providing an environmentally friendly and sustainable production with the awareness of the deep damage caused by single-use plastic products to our planet. Company officials reminded that disposable plastic products have negative effects, especially environmental pollution, and stated that they reuse their own wood waste to obtain biomass energy in the production of their products and adopt sustainable production principles. It was emphasized that products that are compostable, biodegradable and do not contain toxic chemicals can be easily used instead of disposable plastics.
With this social responsibility project carried out jointly by the IMU Sustainability Club and Bimspack, 17 kilograms of plastic waste was prevented from being generated and this waste from remaining in nature for 450 years. 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.
