Sustainability focus for August: Waste
This month we turn our focus to the general behaviour of people on the Tygerberg Campus when they discard plastic bottles, disposable coffee cups and printed notes.
Plastic bottles: During 2015 we recycled over 21 500 kg of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic on the campus, mostly from water and cool drink bottles. Rather use glass bottles, as you will not only reduce the plastic that has to go to landfills, but you will also be protecting your health by preventing chemicals leaching into your water.
Coffee cups: When buying the disposable and compostable coffee cups from our campus coffee shops, make sure you dispose of the cup into the green bin for compostable material and the plastic lid into the blue bin for recyclable material.
Class notes: Statistics show that we have reduced our printing of class notes by almost 5 000 pages per month since 2014, but we will still throw away around 20 metric tons of paper at the end of 2016, which translate into about 480 trees.
So next time you buy a coffee, drink bottled water or print out notes, think about the impact that these activities will have on the Tygerberg Campus, the Western Cape, South Africa and the earth.
Click here for a video on this subject by Mr David Wiles, IT Manager of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences and a member of the Faculty's Green Committee.
