As part of AKU's work on environmental stewardship and sustainability, addressing the use of plastics is of major importance.
While plastics provide many benefits for modern day living, plastic waste is a widely recognised local and global problem. Plastic takes hundreds of years to degrade, takes up valuable space in landfill sites and is polluting to our environment on land as well as in our oceans.
Most plastics are neither biodegradable nor do they get reused or recycled. Experts believe that more than half of plastic products are single-use, meaning they are used once before being discarded. A simple plastic bag can take up to 300 years to decompose, while a plastic bottle takes around 450 years! Plastics also have other impacts such as high water use during production, and chemical leaching into the environment. And of course, plastics are made from fossil fuel, taking over 60 million years for the Earth to produce, as well as contain more than 16,0000 chemicals, of which more than 25% are known to be toxic to the environment and people.
Impact of the reduction of single-use plastics and replacement with re-usable options at AKU has contributed to:
AKU aims to be part of the worldwide shift to rethinking the use of plastics. We aim to be part of the solution and to implement more sustainable practices in all that AKU does.
The range of single-use plastics on our campuses is diverse and reducing use is a complex issue in AKU's geographies of operation. AKU recognizes that not all single-use plastics on our campuses and health care services can be eliminated. But as far as possible, AKU will try to reduce the use of single use plastic items.
