Recycling Project in Canton Puerto Quito, Ecuador

Written by Björn Reschke on behalf of Mathias Krisam, Michael Gschlößl and Joel Schneider

As participants of the “Fincas Tropicales” project in Ecuador, our main task was to teach in primary schools. One thing that especially struck us in the schools we were teaching at and in the communities where we were living was the disposal of the garbage. Due to a lack of adequate disposal facilities the people in the countryside often either burn their garbage or carve it in. We were shocked by the image of children playing around fires of burning plastic bottles, terribly poisoning the air. That was when the idea of a Recycling project came to our minds.

At first we investigated possibilities to sell recyclable plastic waste. In the next biggest city, namely Santo Domingo, we found some places which would at least buy plastic bottles, cans, and paper. After the investigation we started to plan the whole project.

We decided to include at least all 15 schools that employ a volunteer in the cantón Puerto Quito, into the project. In order to make the idea of recycling more easily understandable for the children in the schools we wrote a short play with 4 different characters. The two main characters are a guy called “Pedro” who is slow on the uptake and has never heard of recycling, and a professor called “Sabelotodo”. The professor teaches Pedro the idea of recycling while the he has a hard time understanding. The school kids found it extremely funny to laugh at the “tonto” Pedro who  doesn’t know how to dispose his waste properly. The other two characters were mainly there to reinforce the teachings and take over small parts during the play. In general we can say that the idea of the play has worked out perfectly. The children really enjoyed the show, participated enthusiastically and at the same time learned something about the idea of recycling.

After the play we always left a yellow waste bin (for plastic bottles) and a white one (for paper) at every school. We additionally constructed a compost next to every school to give them the opportunity of creating their own garden mould. We also hung up posters in every classroom explaining the tripartite system of separating the garbage and distributed stickers that stated “Martes – día de la basura”. This means that every Tuesday the kids could take the recyclable waste from their homes to the school and put it into the right bins. By doing so we were hoping to enlarge the amount of recycled waste and thereby reduce the amount of garbage burned at the families’ houses.

The second step of the project had to be taken by every single volunteer at the school he was working for. The volunteers were responsible of collecting the garbage and taking it to Puerto Quito. Whenever there was a reasonable amount we, the organizers, would take it to Santo Domingo and sell it. The idea was to redistribute the money earned among the schools participating. Unfortunately the amount earned was very little (due to the extremely low prices) and our time in the project was over. Therefore we were only able to sell in Santo Domingo three times.

After all we hope that we initiated a beneficial project that helped the kids develop a better understanding for waste disposal. There won’t be a great financial profit from the project, if one at all, still there is an environmental one. It may only be a small contribution towards protecting the nature a little more but awareness is always the first step towards change.