Ansell Portugal hosted its annual Open Day on June 30 to provide community visitors with an overview of its glove manufacturing process. The Ansell Portugal team put a special focus on building awareness and sharing good practices regarding environmental performance, health & safety, innovation and quality.
More than 500 visitors, including the local community, local business partners, employees and their family members, visited on Open Day. With the help of 30 Ansell Portugal employees, the event ran smoothly as they demonstrated their commitment, teamwork and passion for the Company. Open Day has been held annually at Ansell Portugal since 2007. One of its goals is to promote sustainability and engage the local community in good environmental practices.
Taking a Hand in Building Environmental Awareness
Each visitor also received a pair of Ansell Versatouch 78-202 and HyFlex 11-421 gloves imprinted with DIA ABERTO 2018, para promover a sustentabilidade desde 1989, which translates to "Open Day 2018, promoting sustainability since 1989". Ansell Portugal hopes the takeaway will inspire others to become more environmentally aware.
Replacing Single-Use Plastic Cups with an Environmentally-Friendly Alternative
This year, the team at Ansell Portugal used the event to launch an internal initiative, replacing the single-use plastic cups used at the plant with more environmentally-friendly reusable bamboo cups.
Research done by the World Economic Forum estimates that by 2050 there could be more plastic than fish in the sea if preventive measures are not taken immediately. To tackle this problem, the European Commission proposed new EU-wide rules to target the ten most common single-use plastic products found on Europe's beaches and in its seas.
Employees at Ansell Portugal consume over 760 kg of single-use plastic cups per year, which is around 24,000 cups per month. As a first action, single-use plastic cups are being replaced with reusable bamboo cups. Through this simple action, employees hope to raise awareness about the detrimental effects of single-use plastics and become part of the solution.
