Author: Ayşegül Y.G. KALAYCIOĞLU, Quality Manager

Excessive consumption, especially in industrialized countries, leads to rapid decline of natural resources as well as increasing environmental pollution due to emissions and wastes. Garbage and wastes are one of the most important threats to sustainability of life on Earth.

Dissolution periods of some of the wastes are hundreds, even thousands of years in nature. For example, plastic bags degrade in 400 years on land and 800 years in sea. The dissolution period of PET plastic bottles are 400 years. This period is 1000 years for other plastics and polyurethanes and 2 million years for styrofoam.

However, dissolution in nature does not exactly mean that the wastes disappear without any harm to the environment or the living beings. Remember Lavoisier’s Law: “Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed.” Unfortunately, wastes that dissolve under heat, light and rain form micro-particles, emitting poisonous substances to the soil, water and air. These poisonous wastes are consumed by birds, fish and other living beings, and hence are included in the food chain of human beings. In other words, dissolution in nature adversely affects the natural life and all living things.

Today, almost 1 trillion plastic bags and 500 billion PET bottles are used annually, whereas it is estimated that only 7-8% of them can be recycled all over the world.

This data convinces the whole world about what is to be done to reduce environmental pollution: “CONSUME LESS and CREATE LESS WASTE…”

Within the scope of “World Environment Day” activities, in order to attract the attentions of people and contribute to the reduction of plastic consumption, as ICterra, we designed glass water bottles and cloth shopping bags, which we hope will be used by our employees with joy and health.

We hope that all ICterra employees, who appreciate the beauty of blue and green, will spread this understanding to their surroundings. And we wish all the people in the world a “World Environment Day” as lovely as the colors in nature…