Şişecam has won a sustainable business award for a glass project.
It received the award in the social impact category for its Glass and Glass Again project, which promoted the transition to a recycling society by generating social behavioural change
Şişecam’s project was the winner among 23 finalists in the Social Impact category at the sixth edition of the Sustainable Business Awards organised by Sustainability Academy Turkey.
Its Chief Human Resources and Corporate Communications Officer Şengül Demircan and Corporate Communications Director Hale Elif Ergün were present to receive the award.
Şişecam said it promoted the transition to a recycling society by generating social behavioural change through its Glass and Glass Again sustainability and social responsibility project in Turkey.
The key elements of the project were to raise public awareness for separate collection of glass packaging waste at its source, improving the infrastructure for collecting glass packaging waste, modernising recycling facilities and increasing capacities.
It said that since the start of the project in 2011, training regarding recycling has been provided to more than 250,000 primary school students, 20,000 glass-recycling banks have been donated and more than 1.2 million tons of glass packaging waste has been recycled.
It means energy saving has reached a level to meet the annual heating and hot water demand of 52,000 households, and the carbon emission equivalent to the amount of air cleaned by 38 million trees has been prevented.
Use of glass cullet by 10% as an input in glass production helps reduce raw materials by 12%, energy by 2.5%, and CO2 emissions by 5%.
One bottle of waste glass as an input is sufficient to produce a glass bottle, since it is an infinitely and 100% recyclable material that can be recycled with no loss of quality.
Furthermore, recycling a glass bottle is sufficient alone to save electricity required to power a laptop for 25 minutes and a TV for 20 minutes.
