Project to reduce single-use plastic at Stahl Ibérica

From coffee cups and disposable cutlery to food wrappings and soda bottles, there is a lot around us. This has inspired Lidia Martínez Menéndez, Application Engineer at Stahl Ibérica, to start a project to reduce the amount of single-use plastic at her facility.

Start with awareness of your usage

The project started for Lidia, when she was standing at the coffee machine: “I was looking at the plastic cups and stirrers, water bottles and the realization dawned on me. There is a lot of single-use plastic items, also when I think about the amount of packaged goods we unwrap in the lab. It began like an echo in my head: can we change this? So as I was thinking about the final project for my Project Management studies, I decided to focus on reduction measures for single-use plastic at Stahl Ibérica. For example, by replacing our single-use plastic cups with reusable coffee cups.”

Local choices for a global challenge

Single-use plastic is a global issue. That is why the European Commission introduced new laws in May 2018 to tackle the 10 most frequently found plastic items on European beaches such as cutlery, cups, bags and bottles. And that’s not even the end of the issue, as Lidia explains: “Did you know only 9% of this single-use plastic is disposed correctly and incinerated or recycled? The rest ends up on beaches and in the ocean. Large soda companies produce up to 4,000 plastic bottles a minute, which when disposed in nature can break up into 10,000 pieces of micro-plastics that harm ocean life and consequently us. That’s why taking our responsibility is so important.”

Sustainability on all company levels

The Sustainability Department at Stahl is constantly working towards more responsible practices on all levels of operations. From solutions that help customers reduce the environmental footprint of their products and industry transparency to the energy and resource use of our manufacturing sites. This includes the practices beyond chemistry. “I believe Stahl is a truly sustainable company,” says Lidia. “If we all contribute, we can make a change, since opportunities and good ideas are turned into reality here at Stahl Ibérica. I am certain that as we make the effort, we can turn our working sites even more into places that breathe sustainability and where little by little, we remove single-use plastic.”

Read more about Stahl’s efforts in corporate responsibility and sustainability in our 2018 report.