Environmental consciousness is slowly beginning to grow here in Peru. Although the streets are often lined with garbage and conservation is a foreign concept to most people, small groups are beginning to recognize the wealth of resources within Peru and taking action to protect them. The garbage and general apathy towards cleanliness and environmental protection is frustrating, so I wanted to begin environmentally focused efforts at my school. After various conversations with teachers and students, we decided to start a recycling program. I’ve given educational sessions highlighting the importance of recycling with all elementary and high school students (almost 500 students total). Many students have never even heard of recycling, so we discussed the most fundamental ideas related to reusing materials, environmental protection, and how the process of recycling actually works.
I formed an environmental committee within the school with 3 teachers from the elementary school and 3 teachers from the high school and we came up with a work plan for a school-wide recycling competition. In order to incentivize students to bring recyclable materials, we formed a competition between all the different classrooms. Each classroom elected an environmental president to help encourage their peers’ participation and was in charge of monitoring progress. In an effort to involve parents, we also sent home notes to families explaining the competition and requesting their active support and participation. The teachers are animated about the project, and we have been collecting a substantial amount of plastic bottles and used papers. It’s been several months since we’ve begun the project, and it’s had its fair share of struggles along with successes.
The elementary students have been participating actively and are excited about their contribution to their classroom’s collection of recycling. When I see them at their homes or in the street, little children are always asking me about the details of recycling and how they can help out. However, high school students have been much more reluctant to participate. I’ve been told various times (with your best whiny voice), “but Senorita Kelsi, it’s just not cool to come to school with a huge bag of gross plastic bottles… how embarrassing!” I’ve been trying to change their minds and run with the idea that “green” is cool, but it’s a battle.
During the first phase of our recycling program we accumulated well over 400 kilos (about 1000 pounds) of recycling and filled up an entire room with the contents. I coordinated with the local municipality to transport this recycling to Trujillo to sell. When the mayor agreed to offer transportation I was concerned we wouldn’t be able to fit all the recycling into one vehicle; however, when the enormous municipality dump truck arrived my fears were relieved. Working with some school staff and youth we loaded the entire dump truck to the brim with our recycling.
The following day Max (my host brother) and I woke up at 5am to meet the driver and go to Trujillo to sell our recycling. After an hour of sitting in the dark waiting for the truck to come, we’re finally relayed the message that the battery had died in the truck. Fortunately we were still able to go, just several hours later. The recycling center is not in the most beautiful area of Trujillo, so I did my best to look like a boy, rocking a baseball hat and old clothes. We piled in the front of the dump truck and made our way to “El Milagro”. The recycling center appeared to buy anything and everything- old shoe soles, creepy doll heads, rusted car parts… you name it and you could most certainly find it here. I felt like I was trapped in some Peruvian version of that bizarre animated movie about “ The Little Toaster.”
After separating and weighing our recyclables we were handed S./540 in cash for our efforts. I was really excited about this profit- to put it perspective, a teacher or nurse typically earns about S./700 per month, so this was a substantial amount of funds raised. We plan to use these funds to improve our recycling program and benefit the school, focusing particularly on environmental programs. Environmental consciousness is a slow process, especially when so many other issues are confronting a developing community, but I think this success is a testament to what will hopefully incite interest in further environmental projects here in Poroto.
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