Tuesday June 5th is World Environment Day, a global event coordinated by the United Nations intended to encourage awareness and action for the protection of our environment. This year, the event focused on drawing attention to waste management, recycling and plastic pollution. To celebrate this event, our team at our Efemçukuru mine in Turkey, hosted a number of activities throughout the day to highlight how we can recycle used goods to reduce waste and protect the environment.
Just like some of our most direct sources of waste such as tailings can be altered and repurposed to produce backfill for our underground tunnels or even our open pits, many of the products that we use on a daily basis can be recycled. To raise awareness of recycling opportunities at our site our Efemçukuru team repurposed wooden pallets into candleholders and bird houses, oil drums into lawn furniture, and wire spools into coffee tables.
Throughout the day, employees were given gifts made from these recycled materials and participated in a basketball style shootout to sort recyclable material from waste.
“The goal of the event was to make sure employees carry forward the environmental and safety-related consciousness that they gained on our site into their daily lives,” said Pelin Usta, Environmental Superintendent at Efemçukuru.
Changing our perceptions of what we consider waste is an important step to reducing waste pollution by recycling and making a cleaner, more-livable world. Next time you are about to put something in the trash, we encourage you to take some inspiration from our Efemçukuru team and think about how you can recycle it instead!
Check out the video below from the celebrations around World Environment Day!