Istanbul Medeniyet University Sustainability Club continues to develop projects to reduce the environmental footprint.
IMU Sustainability Club organized an “Upcycling – Aluminum” workshop to reduce waste generation within the campus areas. Held on Wednesday, April 24, 2024 at Istanbul Medeniyet University Sustainability Office, the workshop was open to the participation of all our students, staff and the public.
At the beginning of the workshop, Res.Asst. Ayça ÇELİKBİLEK from IMU Sustainability Office talked about the 3R rule in waste management. She emphasized the importance of adopting the principles of firstly reducing consumption (reduce) and then reusing (reuse) in order to reduce the waste generation of individuals and institutions, and pointed out that recycling (recycle) is the last step of this hierarchy. At this point, she stated that zero waste policies and circular economy strategies, which also have an important place in Turkey’s waste management strategies, have introduced new concepts in addition to these basic principles. She explained that upcycling, one of these concepts, involves the reuse or renewal of a product whose original purpose of use has been completed and which has become waste. At this point, she pointed out that as a result of upcycling efforts, a product other than the initial product is produced and the upcycling application increases its value. She explained that the product, which still retains its raw material properties, can be recycled at later stages. 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, ÇELİKBİLEK presented examples of projects organized by the IMU Sustainability Club with these materials.
In the second part of the workshop, the participants learned about how to upcycle the accumulated aluminum can waste that they and the people around them produce as a result of their daily life activities 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.
The second of the Upcycling Aluminum workshops will be held on Thursday, May 02, 2024.
