Lina Mubarak shares her views on National Finance's 'Use Less Plastic' Campaign

Lina Mubarak Al Abdulsalaam, Head of Corporate Communication and Marketing at National Finance shares her views on the organization's 'Use Less Plastic' Campaign.

How did the campaign ‘Use Less Plastic’ come about?

Every day we go to various places and see plastic litter, whether at the beach or the park. You can see birds and other animals trying to look for food through the trash. Sometimes, they ingest plastic that is simply harmful to them.

This is where the idea was born. We were inspired to create something out of the box. Something that would cause immediate action.?

We wanted to help in transforming our employees’ mindsets and cultivate a culture of using reusable products rather than single-use plastic.?

When they can adapt to this, they can inspire their children to do the same. Creating a positive effect starting with themselves and their families.

We thought about every single detail, even the # we choose to use the phrase “Less Plastic” instead of “No Plastic” because we understand that it is extremely hard to change human behavior.?

What steps were taken to execute the ‘Use Less Plastic’ campaign?

Being July the world plastic free day, we decided to kick off the campaign to increase our employee’s awareness on this subject. Other than developing internal messages, we installed a large water-drop-shaped acrylic bin where our employees were encouraged to discard their plastic wastes. Plastic waste material was collected for one whole month from different departments within our organization.

Then we thought about how we can take this campaign externally in an innovative way so that we can create an impact in the market. Since art and culture are embedded deep within our society, we started hunting for Omani Artists whom we can collaborate with until we came across, Abdulkareem Al Rawahi and Yousuf Al Rawahi who will be creating the masterpiece out of the collected waste?plastic?items. This will happen live in Oman Avenues Mall, this coming Friday. We are excited to gather and cheer for the artists this weekend.?

Could you please tell us more about the art piece that will be created with the collected plastic??

The whole concept behind our campaign is recycling plastic and promoting sustainability, turning this hazardous and wasteful material into a stunning work of art.?

The artists - Abdul Hakeem Al Rawahi and Yousef Al Rawahi, together will create the?“Tree of Life”, which symbolizes the continuity of life and represents the hope for a better future. This also represents National Finance as a company where the base is our core foundation and being in the market for more than 35 years, the branches of the tree reflect the growth of our network and customer base and the different colors represents the different products and services we provide.

What have been the benefits of the ‘Use Less Plastic’ campaign?

The "Use Less Plastic" campaign has been successful in making our employees more aware of the importance of using less plastic in their day-to-day life and how can that impact the environment in the long run. It has shown how changing habits, ways of thinking, and attitudes can be shifted if the campaign continues.?

This campaign is just a start, we will continue to explore different initiatives in order to help impact our society and the environment of our beautiful country. In the long run, it would be great to tie up with a partner that would be able to support plastic recycling.

What message would you like to give to general audiences to pursue in their day-to-day life??

We all need to believe that change should start from within, we as people need to talk about this problem and most importantly work on changing a few things in our day-to-day life.?

1. Support the country’s ban on the single-use plastic bags?
2. Bottle our own water?
3. Skip plastic straws?
4. Avoid plastic cutlery?
5. Make better choices at home by choosing products that have less plastic packaging.