REFLECTIVE JOURNAL 2

 

Name : Aisyah Hanani Binti Abdul Rahman

Matric Number : 2012876

UNGS 1201 SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: ISSUES, PRINCIPLES AND PRACTICES SEMESTER 2, 2020/2021 SECTION 11

REFLECTIVE JOURNAL 2

One of the most interesting sustainable practices that I observe is changing or banning the use of polystyrene to use recycled materials or environmentally safe products/containers. The change from polystyrene to paper-based food containers is something that I think is crucial because of the problem caused by the usage of styrofoam or polystyrene quite big to our environment especially landfill, animals. Our landfill becomes full with this polystyrene waste because it is non-biodegradable and it will lead to land pollution, also some of this polystyrene waste was thrown in the jungle or sea which causes animals to mistakenly eaten it. Another big problem is that styrofoam contains harmful chemicals that can affect human health, life, and those who consume food using it. I am also a happy consumer if I saw that a food restaurant using biodegradable food containers from paper-based. In IIUM, all mahallah café that I went to, started using paper-based food containers as one step toward a greener campus. At first, I thought it might be challenging to make this shift from what we used to, which is polystyrene to a safer and greener alternative. I thought the food cafe owner may be reluctant to change from polystyrene paper-based container and customers may have to pay more to use the paper-based material container but I think there is no problem to spend a little more on our environment. Those owners can charge the customer.  But the problem did not occur here in mahallah café. Most of the food restaurants or stalls have stopped using polystyrene. Unfortunately in a bigger society which I observed the situation outside the university, some stopped using polystyrene but did not change the usage from plastic-type food containers to paper-based type food containers. I do not know if this is because of lack of awareness in those food restaurant owners or the paper-based food container is not easily found which I doubted is hard to find in our country Malaysia. I think maybe we need to work on stressing the importance of using paper-based food containers in our society because the material is safe for our earth and can be recycled again. A lot of big franchises such as McDonald's and Starbucks also have started using all paper-based food containers for their foods and beverages which I support for sure. This initiative is great that it was already done with big brands. Hence, I hope it can influence other food franchises and chains to change the use of plastic-based food containers to paper-based in our society.