How I’m Making My Life Green, at UNICEF and at Home by Aysel Toprakli

How I’m Making My Life Green, at UNICEF and at Home

by Aysel Toprakli

For me a sustainable life starts with the environment I am living in. This is my home, my workplace, my city, and my country, then we can extend it to our planet Earth which is home for all humanity, nature, and other creatures. How can we sustain our environment? It starts with being mindful of using our resources such as water, electricity, transportation, and doing recycling so that some material can be reutilized and reduces the need to consume natural resources.

In my daily life, I have always been mindful in using resources such as electricity, and water. I turn of lights when it is not required, both in the office and at home. I filter drinking water instead of buying water in plastic bottles. I pay attention to recycle every bit of recyclable material. Thankfully, I have been living in environments where recycling is widely used, at home, in my office and in the city. I separate recyclable material and put them into their respective bins at home, in the office and in the city where bins are available to recycle materials.

I also volunteer for the activities to help promote the greening our environment, in my personal and work life. I have been a volunteer in UNICEF Green Team since more than 10 years. I took part in promoting recycling in the office, promoting replacement of plastic utensils and cups with the paper cups and wooden utensils in the cafeteria and in the meeting rooms. Besides, UNICEF Green Team, I have been a volunteer at the UN Food Gardens since past 6 years. This is to promote locally grown produce in a smaller scale. By composting stuff pruned from the garden and food scraps, a soil is produced rich in nutrients and reused in the garden thus avoiding use of non-organic nutrients. This is towards sustaining our biodiversity which includes plants, trees, insects, bees, birds, and other animals in larger scales.

In my personal life, over the years, I started using my own re-usable coffee cup, and water bottle when I am in the office and outside. At home I never use single use plastics (utensils or plates). I used to use plastic utensils before, when I was taking my lunch to the office but stopped using plastic utensils when I received my own reusable utensil set at a Green Fair ☺... Unless I am obliged to, I don’t use plastic kitchen utensils. I also started carrying my own reusable shopping bag since past few years, thus avoiding use of plastic bags.

I also try to use environmentally friendly detergents and soap for cleaning and laundry if I can find them. In addition to the environmental sustainability, being part of a greening team gives the happiness of being part of a solution. Planting and growing our own produce have been a great learning experience for me. It is such a happiness to eat the fruit of a plant grown from a seed that you planted. I now feel more respectful and thankful to the farmers who take care of all those details from planting, to the care of the produce, harvesting and bringing them to the markets so that we can buy and use for our nutrition.

Considering the carbon footprint, I am using public transportation instead of driving. This is reduced to almost 0-level during COVID-19 lockdown. I shop local or online, so I don’t have to drive or use any means of transportation. As a global well-known organization, UNICEF’s leadership in going green can be a good example for other organizations globally which at the end serves to all communities to be able to live in a sustainable environment.

Aysel Toprakli is a Turkish national who started her career at IBM Istanbul HQ. She was transferred to AT&T when AT&T acquired IBM Global Network Services Department until 2002. She then moved to the US and joined UNICEF NYHQ where she worked in the Information Communication

Technology Division until October 2022. Currently, she is in the transition to retirement.

Aysel has been an active member of UNICEF NY Staff Association’s Greening Team and served as volunteer in various greening activities. Among them are activities on recycling, the implementation of “No Plastic Cups” project, volunteer at the UN Food Gardens (AKA UNSRC

Gardening Club ). She holds a BS degree in Computer Engineering from Middle East Technical University (METU) and an MS degree in Business Management & Leadership from City University of New York, School of Professional Studies (CUNY SPS).