Feature Stories
Say No to All Plastic
Environment 29 October 2021
Whilst plastic has many valuable uses, we have become addicted to single use or disposable plastic and it comes with severe environmental consequences. Around the world, one million plastic drinking bottles are purchased every minute, whilst 5 trillion single use plastic (SUP) bags are used worldwide every year. In total, half of all plastic produced is designed to be used only once and then thrown away. Plastic waste is now so ubiquitous in the natural environment that scientists have even suggested it could serve as a geological indicator of the Anthropocene era.
In line with Malaysia’s Roadmap Towards Zero SUP and United Nations SDG 12 – Responsible Production and Consumption to encourage responsible and sustainable consumption of plastic, YTL Group rolled out a group-wide “Say No to All Plastic” (SNAP) campaign in 2019, championed by our Executive Chairman Tan Sri (Sir) Francis Yeoh to eliminate all SUP by 2025. In our commitment to achieve this ambitious goal, we embarked on a series of initiatives such as the setting up of baseline targets across business operations, raising awareness through the SNAP campaign, introducing alternative solutions to replace SUP, as well as taking collective action through partnerships and collaboration.
In 2021, we further categorised SUP into two categories: Avoidable and Non-avoidable. Our SNAP campaign prioritises avoidable SUP to allow a better focus on addressing plastic with more feasible and immediate alternative solutions. In this regard, we developed a SNAP handbook for all employees and business units which introduced our approach on SUP as well as highlighting commonly used avoidable SUP and sharing of environmentally friendly alternatives. Our current plastic reduction strategies can be divided into four types of initiatives:
- Going Plastic Free
Implementation of various initiatives to reduce the consumption of avoidable SUP across our business operations
- Driving Behavioural Change
Raising employees’ awareness via internal communication (newsletters and intranet) and employee engagement activities (contests, awareness talks, webinars and volunteering)
- Knowledge and Technology
Adoption of technology and knowledge enhancement programmes to improve plastic waste management across our business units.
- Community Outreach
Raising public awareness on avoidable SUP and encouraging them to be part of the solution with initiatives and activities.
This year, we saved approximately 1.65 million pieces of avoidable SUP. Of that, 132,000 plastic straws were saved with the replacement of environmentally friendly alternatives and only offered upon request. 800,000 plastic bottles were saved with the use of reusable glass bottles combined with the installation of centralised filtration stations, water dispensers and in-house bottling systems. 500,000 miniature bottles were saved with the installation of refillable pump/wall-mounted dispensers. Wessex Water also installed 16 permanent refilling points through their Refill Not Landfill campaign and helped to divert approximately 192,000 plastic bottles from recycling and landfill annually. Moving forward, we will be focusing on another avoidable SUP on top of the existing initiatives and ultimately achieving our aim of zero SUP across our business units.
Individually, we can also help solve the plastic crisis by sticking to a five-point plan: Reduce drastically the amount of avoidable SUP; 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.
