Where once there was Earth Day, there's now Earth Week. Not officially, mind you, but a lot of sustainability messaging from organizations and companies are stressing the approach across multiple days.
What does this mean for the plastics industry? Expect a lot more statements to come out the next few days about reducing the use of plastics or at least recycling.
The University of Southern California, for instance, is marking the week by announcing that future contracts with vendors will "need to be renegotiated to ensure new materials comply with the university's sustainability protocols."
That means moving from plastic to glass, aluminum and cardboard packaging.
"We are only starting to get a handle on how many plastic bottles end up in the garbage across our campuses," said USC Chief Sustainability Officer Mick Dalrymple. "USC is highly decentralized, making it difficult to establish universitywide systems and measurements, but the moves we're working on right now to eliminate single-use plastic bottles cover a substantial portion of the volume.
"When combined with the schools and other administrative departments eliminating their purchases, I expect we'll soon see about 90 percent of the plastic bottles disappear from USC," he said.
The Los Angeles-based university has more than 20,000 undergraduate students.
