A global player in the glass and chemicals industries, Şişecam Group was awarded at the Sustainable Business Awards 2019 for its “Glass and Glass Again” sustainability and social responsibility project.
Şişecam’s project was the winner among 23 finalists in the “Social Impact” category at the sixth edition of the Sustainable Business Awards organized by Sustainability Academy Turkey. At the award ceremony, Şengül Demircan, Chief Human Resources and Corporate Communications Officer, and Hale Elif Ergün, Corporate Communications Director, were present to receive the award on behalf of Şişecam Group.
Since launch in 2014, the Sustainable Business Awards are one of the most prestigious platforms to honour the projects with long-term goals and strategies focused on the society and environment. The platform strives to highlight the projects that have created significant impacts by proactively handling and managing the economic, environmental and social impacts of the institutions and sharing them with the masses; and to accelerate the transition to sustainable business models. After the application process, 37 jury members, mostly academics, evaluated the competing projects, and awarded the success of the Şişecam’s comprehensive sustainability and social responsibility project.
Thus, Glass and Glass Again become the winner among 23 projects in the “Social Impact” category.
1.2 million tons of glass packaging waste has been recycled
Şişecam Group promotes the transition to a recycling society by generating social behavioural change through one of the most comprehensive sustainability and social responsibility projects in Turkey, the “Glass and Glass Again” project. The key elements of this project are raising public awareness for separate collection of glass packaging waste at its source, improving the infrastructure for collecting glass packaging waste, modernizing recycling facilities, and increasing capacities.
Since the start of the project in 2011, trainings regarding recycling have 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. Thus, energy saving has reached the 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. Thanks to the communications activities, the project reached 4 million people by printed and online media, and 3.5 million people by social media accounts last year.
Şişecam’s Sustainability Strategy: Preserve, Empower and Progress
While striving to be among the top global companies in all of Şişecam Group’s core business lines, we take into account the social, environmental and economic pillars of sustainability to bring an equitable, viable and bearable future for the next generations. To this end, Şişecam mainstreamed sustainability principles in its corporate strategy and realigned its operations to add value to generations to come while striving to become a fair and transparent global player
As a global party to and a supporter of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, Şişecam Group initiated its integrated corporate sustainability strategy under the title “Care for Next”.
Şişecam’s way forward on the sustainability pathway is built on the “preserve”, “empower” and “progress” sustainability pillars. With its Care for Next approach, Şişecam aims to preserve natural resources and corporate heritage for new generations, to approach all its stakeholders with principles on respecting diversity and inclusion, to encourage digitalization, and to continue operations without any negative impacts on climate change.
It is possible to power a laptop for 25 minutes by recycling one glass bottle
Use of glass cullets by 10 percent as an input in glass production helps reduce raw materials by 12 percent, energy by 2.5 percent, and CO2 emissions by 5 percent. One bottle of waste glass as an input is sufficient alone to produce a glass bottle, since it is an infinitely and 100 percent recyclable material that can be recycled with no loss of quality. Furthermore, recycling a glass bottle is sufficient alone to save electricity needed to power a laptop for 25 minutes and a TV for 20 minutes.