The New Year's holiday is a time for giving and receiving gifts. Kagazy Recycling and Kazakhstan Waste Recycling, inspired by the holidays, decided to give the city a special environmental gift.

Through the project "Save the Christmas Trees", promoted through the Facebook social network, any Almaty resident interested in the fate of our conifer friends could participate. Between December 3 and 12, participants of the project brought waste paper to a Kazakhstan Waste Recycling collection center and received in return a souvenir cardboard Christmas tree made by some talented designers from our plant. The purpose of the project was to draw attention to the mass, senseless harvesting of evergreens during the New Year's season and to encourage Almaty residents to have a more responsible attitude toward the environment.

The scale of the campaign was unprecedented, utilizing social networks such as Facebook. During the nine-day project, 65 residents of Almaty turned in waste paper at our collection point. In addition, 19 major local and international companies and organizations took part in the project, including Beeline Kazakhstan, Samsung Kazakhstan, Carlsberg Kazakhstan, Ipek Kagyt Kazakhstan, AECOM, Deloitte, Technogym, Mitsubishi Motors Distributors, The American Chamber of Commerce, American Councils for International Education, Kazhydromet Center for Sustainable Development, FSC Regional Office in the CIS, Eurasia Foundation of Central Asia, Tetra Pak Kazakhstan, ITECA, CSR Central Asia, as well as KazNU and KIMEP Universities. Each of these promoted the initiative through their own channels, helping to create positive public relations around the effort. Under the terms of the project, partners who donated waste paper also received cardboard Christmas trees in return.

As a sense of social responsibility grows in Kazakhstan, it is important to encourage socially responsible behavior. In order to make the competition even more fun and festive, and to reward citizens for caring for the environment, we provided suitable prizes. On December 12 three winners were randomly selected from among those who turned in waste paper. V.V. Rossiyskiy, Nuria Smagul and Saken Erdenov will each receive a brand new Samsung tablet.

Through the joint efforts of socially responsible individuals and companies 2 tons and 256 kilograms of waste paper were collected during the campaign, thus saving 38 Christmas trees, 451.2 cubic meters of water and 2,256 kilowatts of power. The number of trees saved is enough to provide ionized oxygen for 68 people.

All of the waste paper collected will be given a second life, because Kagazy Recycling is the largest producer of paper and packaging from recycled raw materials in Kazakhstan and Central Asia. Likewise, Kazakhstan Waste Recycling has established itself as a leading choice in the market for collecting and sorting of waste paper in Kazakhstan, and is one of the leading companies for the collection and sorting of other types of recycled materials.

distributed by