Istanbul Medeniyet University Sustainability Club continues to develop projects to reduce environmental footprint.
IMU Sustainability Club organized an “Upcycling – Aluminum” workshop to reduce waste generation within the campus areas. The workshop was held on Thursday, May 02, 2024 at Istanbul Medeniyet University Sustainability Office and was open to the participation of all our students, staff and the public.
At the beginning of the workshop, Res.Asst. Furkan ERUÇAR from IMU Sustainability Office pointed out that recycling is the last step in waste management hierarchy to reduce waste generation. He stated that although aluminum is a recyclable material, recycling will lead to carbon emissions due to transportation and storage as well as the energy requirement for recycling. For this reason, he emphasized the importance of upcycling as a priority. Stating that upcycling will provide significant benefits to circular economy as well as supporting zero waste policies, ERUÇAR stated that upcycling practices are practices that increase the value of the product. He informed that reuse practices that reduce the value of the product are called downcycling. Emphasizing that making new products from waste fabrics and projects involving the reuse of products such as glass and aluminum are good examples of upcycling practices, the project team presented examples of the projects organized by the IMU Sustainability Club with these materials and talked about their future work.
For the implementation phase of the second workshop, IMUSUS members first collected beverage cans used during the day from the restaurant and canteen areas at Göztepe North Campus. Afterwards, the participants learned about how the aluminum can waste will be upcycled within the project. After the project team provided information on how aluminum can be used in artworks and the planned exhibition works, the participants prepared aluminum stamps from the beverage cans they brought with them.
With the collection of aluminum beverage cans in restaurants and canteens on campus, the project also contributed to reducing the amount of waste generated within the campus areas and became a corporate responsibility project that supports the zero waste policy of our University.
You can follow the future Upcycling Aluminum workshops on @surdurulebilir_imu Instagram account.
