IMU Sustainability Student Club (IMUSUS) carries out many social responsibility projects to reduce the amount of waste generated in the campus areas of our University and to recycle the waste on-site.
IMU Sustainability Student Club (IMUSUS) completed the R&D stages of waste recycling and upcycling activities and started to produce items in their workshops. IMUSUS, which first produced snowflake ornaments and then calendar bases, started to prepare play dough molds from recycled PET bottles. The project team is preparing to send the toys they produced to pre-school education classes on April 23rd with the school aid project they carried out to contribute to equal opportunities in education.
IMUSUS established a plastic recycling workshop in cooperation with Tylman Design and the Sustainability Office for the plastic recycling phase of their waste management project, and installed two PETMachines to recycle waste produced from PET materials. The project team completed the installation of the machines in October and started to produce their first products with the materials they recycled in November. The team first produced snowflake ornaments as part of the Sustainability Week ’24 activities, and then supported the calendar projects they produced in the paper workshop. The first PET recycling project of 2025 was the toys of the social responsibility project, which was implemented to create smiles on children’s faces on April 23rd. The team started to prepare play dough molds from the filaments produced by recycling PET bottles. The toys, which were produced with approximately 30 different designs, were designed by Furkan ERUÇAR and Ayça ÇELİKBİLEK, research assistants at the Sustainability Office.
The club will organize numerous PET filament recycling workshops within the project and aims to inform IMU students, staff and the public about the importance of recycling and upcycling of plastic materials and the importance of on-site recycling, as well as producing products with these workshops. In this context, the workshops will be open to general participation with a limited number of participants. The in-team training workshops of the club were held on February 17 and March 03, 2025. In the workshops, first of all, the academic advisor of the IMU Sustainability Student Club, Res.Asst. Ayça ÇELİKBİLEK, gave information about the plastic recycling and upcycling projects they have carried out so far as a student club. ÇELİKBİLEK drew attention to the fact that while social responsibility projects related to plastic lids are produced in many parts of Turkey, almost no projects are produced for the bottles to which these lids belong. ÇELİKBİLEK stated that these plastic bottles, in addition to generating waste, are lightweight and fly in the wind, which leads to many negative consequences such as marine pollution and threatening the lives of marine life. ÇELİKBİLEK stated that all members of the community are sensitive about environmental pollution and therefore they attach special importance to waste management in their social responsibility projects. ÇELİKBİLEK stated that their aim is to recycle the wastes produced within the campus areas on site and thus they will both reduce the amount of energy needed for recycling and reduce carbon emissions. She emphasized that the workshops to be carried out within this project will form an important part of Istanbul Medeniyet University’s 3R (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle) programs, which include reducing, reusing and recycling waste.
After giving general information about the project, IMUSUS student club president Res.Asst. Furkan ERUÇAR gave information about the operation and use of PETmachine, which was designed by Tylman Design to convert PET bottles. After the users gained basic information about the use of the machine, the application phase of the workshops started. In the workshops, PET bottles were first turned into filament, and then upcycled by 3D printers to produce play dough molds. Through this process, the participants were shown the tangible benefits of recycling, while at the same time contributing to raising awareness on sustainability.
In these two workshops, 16 PET bottles were transformed into filament. Team members stated that they aim to recycle approximately 1.5 kg of plastic waste per week during the project, and at the end of the project; 15 kg of plastic will be recycled into toys. Team members stated that all our students, staff and the public can contribute to the recycling of these plastic wastes and the social responsibility project by bringing their water bottles of 1.5 liters or more to the Sustainability Office.
IMU Sustainability Student Club stated that those who want to get information about the project and PET recycling activities can follow the @surdurulebilir_imu Instagram account.
