In everyday life, we use it for drinking, cooking, hygiene maintenance, exercising, and cleaning. Up to 60% of our body is made of it, and we can’t live for more than three days without it. It is an essential resource in the agriculture, industry, and energy sectors. And its currents help distribute heat more evenly across the planet’s surface; otherwise, Earth would be uninhabitable. You probably guessed it; we are talking about WATER.
Sunce’s mission in water conservation
Unfortunately, humanity does not manage water sustainably. As a result, in 2022, as many as 2.2 billion people did not have access to clean drinking water, and current statistics show that half of the world’s population faces serious water scarcity for at least one month a year. Considering that the world’s population is only increasing, along with the impact of climate change, it is high time for us to come together and do something significant about the protection and preservation of one of our most precious resources.
The importance of that mission will be marked in a special way this year by Sunce association and Garnier cosmetics brand. To show support for more sustainable water management, these two partners are organizing Cetina Canyon clean-up action on World Water Day on March 22, 2024.
– The Cetina River Canyon is particularly important to us. Sunce even helped create the Decision and measures on limiting the use of single-use plastics in the area of the Cetina River Canyon in 2022. – reminds Tea Kuzmičić Rosandić, project manager at Sunce.
Achieving beauty with reduced plastic use
As a leading global brand, Garnier has been operating with a sustainable business model for years, which includes making and implementing decisions in line with sustainability principles. One of these decisions is the introduction of more packaging made from recycled materials and packaging suitable for recycling.
– According to our Sustainable Progress Report 2022, thanks to the use of recycled plastic, we saved 15,800 tons of new plastic globally. We will continue to reduce the weight of our total plastic packaging production, until we manage to achieve savings of 40,000 tons of plastic by 2030. – says Peter Šulc from Garnier.
Additionally, 83% of Garnier’s PET plastic comes from recycled materials. By 2030, as they announce, all their products will be made from 100% recycled plastic and will be 100% recyclable, refillable, or reusable.
Education of the business sector and youth
Cetina Canyon clean-up action is another initiative by Garnier, and besides the positive environmental impact, the goal of this activity is to encourage their employees to adopt sustainable habits.
– The education of the business sector is extremely important to us at Sunce as well. We continuously encourage the development of environmentally conscious employees, our own and others, who will be ready to participate actively and responsibly in the community and solve problems in collaboration with others. – said Tihana Arapović, the organizer of this clean-up action at Sunce.
In addition to the clean-up action, Garnier co-financed the Sunce’s Youth Seminar event this year. It is an activity through which Sunce is trying to encourage young people to actively participate in environmental protection to achieve sustainable development in the local community.
– So far, we have held six seminars for young people, and Garnier has joined the last one. After attending workshops, students who participated in the seminar must submit their independent projects under the mentorship of Sunce and participate in the clean-up action in Omiš. You will soon find out more about their projects on our website. – said Martina Talajić, an educator at Sunce.
Action for sustainable changes
In addition to the young people who participated in the Youth Seminar event, along with employees of Sunce and Garnier, in Cetina Canyon clean-up action will participate the Public Institution More i krš (under whose jurisdiction the protected area of the canyon is), representatives of the From River to the Sea – Let’s Be Plastic Free project, students and staff of the High School “Braća Radić” and students from the Faculty of Economics as part of the Career for Green, Digital, and Sustainable Tourism project (a project funded by the Ministry of Tourism and Sports).
Ivana Paradžiković and influencers Ivan Milić and Barbara Vesanović will also support the clean-up action on Friday.
– I joined this action because I want to raise awareness about environmental protection. We are part of that environment, and we live in it, so by taking care of the environment, we are actually taking care of ourselves. So far, I have participated in clean-up actions of about ten beaches and one cave, so I am looking forward to experiencing the same thing on the riverbank. – said Vesanović with a smile, who is better known on social media as Debela Barbara.
While we will be doing the clean-up action this Friday, we hope that each of you, in order to contribute to sustainability and water conservation, will start paying more attention to the type of packaging you decide to buy.
– Every one of us can contribute to environmental protection in many ways, and one of the first steps towards creating a waste management hierarchy is waste reduction. The idea is not to constantly organize clean-up actions. Less waste in our everyday lives will result in less waste in the environment. – concluded Matea Taraš, Master of Ecology and Marine Protection at Sunce.