American University of Sharjah
IN-24: Innovation A

Leading up to the AUS Single-Use-Plastic (SUP) ban in 2020, AUS Sustainability set up comprehensive sourcing standards to support on campus vendors in the procurement of plastic alternatives to comply with the ban of petroleum based plastics on campus. After initial talks with on campus vendors we realized a need for pro-active communication and engagement with our vendors to increase end-to-end transparency in their packaging sourcing process in order to achieve the desired outcome of the SUP ban. This is why we set out to create a comprehensive sourcing standard guide for our vendors and scheduled a series of workshops to support them in the different phases of the packaging sourcing process. During this process we realized that independent, local vendors faced less challenges in adjusting their packaging supply chain than vendors affiliated to large, global franchising corporations like Starbucks, Subway and Burger King. Through continuous meetings with senior management of the respective franchises we managed to positively impact the packaging sourcing process for their entire regional operation and were happy to see that the SUP ban at AUS could have a bigger impact beyond the campus premises. Effectively, large chains like Subway and Burger King started to remove plastic packaging and eating utensils from their entire outlet portfolio and replaced them with paper, bamboo or corn-starch based products.