Mundo Verde

Recicla Três Rios Mundo Verde Project

Recicla Três Rios/Mundo Verde project grew from the engagement of our company in the Recycle Três Rios Environmental Education and selective collecting of waste, which assumed the challenge to improve the quality of life, the environmental condition of the city and urban cleanness, besides providing jobs for the people, revenue and economical growth from environmental education, based on a process of articulation of all organized community.

Partnership with Recicla Três Rios has stimulated Surya Henna and Mundo Verde to participate as collaborators to solve a topic that represented a great difficulty of the project: to promote the sales of the products generated to the final consumer. Mundo Verde is providing the brooms that are imported to the US by Surya Nature. Another institution that support this project is Abrapan, an association that gathers companies of natural products in Brazil with environmental responsibilities (Mundo Verde and Surya Henna are associated to Abrapan).

Through this vision, and conscious that each person and each company has a specific ability and qualification, Mundo Verde intends to create and participate of a mutual chain of people and organizations in order to contribute to the effectiveness of actions which crave the economical and social balance.

Photos manufacturing

Environmental education changing culture and forging citizens

Três Rios is a small city in the inner state of Rio de Janeiro. By January 1999, a strong storm, common to the region in the summer, hit the city and flooded it, isolating people inside their houses, schools and shops. When the water diminished, mud, hundreds of plastic bottles and every kind of waste were scattered all over the streets. What was previously the consequence of the floods became business opportunities through environmental education, providing jobs and important revenue to many people and, most of all, offering the possibility for Três Rios residents to practice their active citizenship.

Beggining of the activities

In 1999, Recicla Três Rios - Environmental Education and Selective Collection of Garbage began, with the purpose of improving the quality of life, the environmental situation of the city and urban cleanness, generating revenues and economical development, from environmental education and from a process of union of the community. This is the challenge: to educate, not only students, but also entrepreneurs and the organized community.

Results

While the process continued, spontaneous actions which resulted in a great multiplying effect came forth. Schools, which in the beginning didn't have programs and campaigns tied up to environmental issues and with selective collect of waste, have created internal projects for environmental campaigns. These projects were the basis to Recicla Três Rios.

The desire for participating was immediate. As well as in schools, companies showed citizenship and social responsibility. Grupo Bramil (a supermarket chain) has donated every kind of residual, like carton, plastic, glass, and has sponsored the manufacturing of pouches and pamphlets. Companhia Industrial Santa Matilde conceded a storage shed to keep the selective works, compressing and warehousing of the recycled materials. Other company called Paraibuna Embalagens conceded, in commodatun, a shrink machine for packing the plastic. Geraldo, a trimmer technician from the city, conceded too a hydraulic shrinker.

There also were examples of citizenship that touched the community. Like Rita Gonçalves (72 years old), a humble resident which collected material in the neighborhood and delivered it to the selective garbage truck. "I've joined Recicla Três Rios because I believe in the project and because it helps to sustain the main hospital in the city", she says.

Célio Matos, Luiza Vieira and Rosa Sorordoni (ages 84, 76 and 84) participate since the beginning of the project. They go out early in the morning to collect the garbage thrown by other residents in the streets and in front of houses and shops. After that, they separate, wash and pack the materials to deliver them to the truck of the project. They have volunteered to collect the materials with the objective to collaborate because of the benefits the project provided to humanitarian institutions and to help protecting the environment.

Mrs. Luiza said, excited: "We do this for love to the others and to the environment."

Mrs. Irene Romeiro, 78 years old, and his grandson Guilherme Fonseca (13), besides separating the materials in their house, also encouraged their friends to do the same. "Even my grandson already knows the importance of separating the garbage for recycling. The results are excellent to the environment and the streets get cleaner and more beautiful", says Romeiro.

As a result of the cultural changes and of the consciousness of the community, there was an improvement in environmental and economical issues, translated in numbers that include Recycle Três Rios Project in the Brazilian average rates of recovering of recycled garbage in programs of selective collection in the country: about 15% of the total garbage collected is recycled.

From 1999 (when the selective collection began) to 2002, about 25 direct jobs were created; more than 1.7 million kilos of recycled material were commercialized. The project generated revenues through the sale of materials and provided saving of raw materials, in the consumption of power and water. Part of the values gathered were used to help the Hospital Nossa Senhora da Conceição, the crèche Amigos do Caminho, Obra Social Santa Filomena and Grupo Faternidade Irmão Rogério Cláudio.

Conclusion

Through a work of consciousness and a new approach on garbage collecting, defining concepts, and multiplying the information, nowadays there is a great number of people that know that there are new ways to treat the environment, new postures in order to reach a better world, with more conscious citizens and sensitive to their roles regarding environment.

In the city of Três Rios the change of disposition towards the garbage was noticeable, if compared to the beginning of the project. Schools have implanted environmental issues into their programs. Many companies have correctly destined their solid residues, whether donating them to the project, whether selling them and reverting the revenues to the employees. These companies also opened a space to the employees for lectures about selective collection of waste and included issues about environmental education into their security training.

In 2002 the Conselho Municipal de Meio Ambiente was created and the public administration was already elaborating a proposal of management of solid residues, involving the changing of organic garbage into compost, the creation of a hygienic earthwork and a specific legislation to deal with the issue. This shows the change of values regarding what was "only garbage".

Other conclusions are the great results of the works with teenagers and elders, since these two groups spread the message to other people, inside homes, even in the relationship between children and their parents.

In 2002, a new phase of the project began, searching for the increase of the value added to the residues, as a demand from all involved in the process. This way, a small plant of Ecological Brooms made of plastic from PET bottles was implemented and the broom was having a good acceptance from the community. Other plans were being designed, as the creation of a center for recycled paper manufacturing, which would begin to work in 2003 and would interact with wanting students.

What has began in 1999, and that could be just one more project for selective collecting of waste, thanks to environmental education based on the development and compromising of partners and, in great part, of the community, became a motivating experience in the whole city. There was in 2002 other two cities doing the same work.The project reunited too volunteers that gathered to create the first environmental association of the city: "Projeto Três Rios Cultural and Environmental Association", founded in November 2001. A non-profitable organization which legally represents the project

Total of colected material - 1,754,547 kg
Paper/carton - 853,127 kg
Plastic - 419,398 kg
Aluminum - 11,537 kg
Scrap iron - 147,101 kg
Glass - 316,857 kg
Textile - 6,527 kg

Recycling of Paper

853,127 kg of paper means:
34,125 trees not cut down - for each ton of recycled paper, 40 eucalyptus weren't cut down.
8,530,000 liters of water were saved - For each ton o recycled paper, 10,000 liters of water are saved.
2,133 oil barrels not used - For each ton of recycled paper, 2.5 oil barrel is saved.
2,599 m3 of soil weren't used - For each ton of recycled paper, there wasn't need to spend 3m3 on embankments, which corresponds to 2,599 liters.

Recycling of Plastic

From the 419,398 kg collected, 168,000 were PET plastic.
1 ton of PET corresponds to 22,000 bottles - 3,629,000 were recovered.
Saving of 4,19 tons of oil - for each 100 tons of recycled plastic, 1 ton of oil was saved.

Recycling of Aluminium

11,537 kg collected = 807,590 cans (1 kg= 70 cans) 57,685 kg of bauxite were saved - for each tom of recycled aluminum, 5 tons of bauxite were spared that would be extracted from nature, and the process of recycling saved 95% of electric power that would be necessary to processing from this raw material.

Glass Recycling

316,897 kg represents:
316,897 kg of shiver of glass corresponds to 1 ton of new glass - 100% recyclable.
380 tons of raw material saved - the manufacturing of 1 ton of glass spends 1.2 ton of raw material.
For each 10% of recycled glass in the compound, it was saved 2.5% of power necessary.

To purchase the ecological broom:

USA - Wholesale
Surya Nature Inc.
60-01 31st Avenue
Woodside, New York 11377
Phone: 718-267-9696
Fax: 718-267-9648
customerservice@suryahenna.com.br
www.suryahenna.com.br

USA - Retail
EnvironGentle
543 Coast Highway 101
Encinitas, CA 92024
760-753-7420

EcoCentric
306 3rd
McCall, ID 83638
208-634-1130

VIRTUAL STORE
www.bytheplanet.com
www.bytheplanet.com/MoreInfo/details.htm

OTHER COUNTRIES:
jorge@mundoverde.com.br
marcia@mundoverde.com.br

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