Feature Stories
Zero Single Use Plastic
ENVIRONMENT 21 October 2019
Over the past 50 years, global production and consumption of plastics has increased more than 20 times, and plastic production has reached 320 million tonnes a year. Plastic is a persistent material that take centuries to degrade, hence contributing greatly to the pollution crisis, especially that of single use plastics. To put it into perspective, one single water bottle can remain on the planet for around 450 years, which will then break down into microplastics. This means that the first patented PET bottles are still in existence since they were first created in 1973.
Mass production and consumption of plastic, single use plastic packing in particular, contributed greatly to the pollution of the land and sea. It has been impacting our ecosystems, endangering animal lives and also threatening human health. The United Nation’s SDG 12 on responsible consumption and production challenges us to rethink linear make-take-waste models and provide an important call to action for businesses and consumers. The way we currently design, produce and consume plastics is both unsustainable and inefficient. Game-changing steps have to be taken by all parties to tackle the plastic issue and change our production and consumption habits.
In October 2018, the Ministry of Energy, Science, Technology, Environment and Climate Change (MESTECC) launched the “Roadmap Towards Zero Single Use Plastics by 2030” for Malaysia to address the plastic pollution problem in a holistic manner. In line with the ZSUP roadmap and SDG 12 to encourage responsible and sustainable consumption of plastic, YTL Group has rolled out a company-wide roadmap with a series of initiatives, including the new campaign “Say No to All Plastic” (SNAP), championed by our Executive Chairman Tan Sri Dato’ (Dr) Francis Yeoh to work towards Zero SUP by 2025. This initiative started by raising awareness and introducing efforts to reduce and eventually eliminate SUP across all YTL business units.
Following the launch of this initiative, YTL Group has been actively reducing plastic consumption. To date, 203,300 straws have been saved annually through the removal of plastic straws from all our hotel operations globally, while 1,044,900 plastic water bottles have been saved by setting up water dispensers, filtration systems and RO plants. Approximately 3,000 coffee pods are also recycled yearly. In addition, compostable food containers, cloth or reusable laundry bags as well ceramic bottles are used in substitute of the usual plastic packaging.
YTL Group has been advocating and spreading awareness to drive behavioural change through social media, our quarterly Sustainability Newsletter as well as the exciting #YTLBiggie3.0 competition which runs around the theme “Free Plastic? Plastic Free!”. Steering towards the “Zero Waste” ambition, Geneco has partnered with National Environment Agency of Singapore (NEA) to launched the nation-wide campaign “Say Yes to Waste Less” to encourage the general public to reduce excessive use of disposable items by saying no and also switching to reusable and sustainable alternatives.
Individually, we can also help to curb this plastic crisis by sticking to this five-point plan: Reduce drastically the amount of single use plastic; Refuse unnecessary plastic packaged products; switch to containers and alternatives that can be Reused; innovatively Reform products to give them a second life and Recycle what you no longer need.