Loíza – In the parking lot of the Miguel Fuentes Pinet park, environmentalists awaited, with labels and educational tables, to which residents loiceños and other parts of the island will deliver their recyclable materials at the station of Clean.
As every third Saturday of the month, this non-profit entity, founded in 2018, makes its “pop-ups” or stations of recyclingin the sports facilities of Loízato promote waste reduction practices and increase the ecological awareness of citizenship. The most recent edition, last weekend, served as a preamble to the Planet Weekwhich is currently celebrated.
“We are not only collecting recyclable materials, but we are also educating how to correctly identify these materials and what is sustainable management of resources, which include other practices before recycling to avoid so many waste daily”he explained Aura Luz Guzmándirector of the four cleaning programs.
In early 2018, Jamie Claypoole I visited the piñones beaches and saw the solid waste They ended up arriving at the ocean. “It made me feel sad because I was a lot of garbage that they put in bags, but it was not collected,” he lamented, in English.
“I started with my husband to go to the beaches to collect garbage in our cars, but we were frustrated because it was too much. We could not do this forever. We had to organize it and, therefore, We create clean, to teach how to reduce garbage every day of our life and how to assume responsibility”Calypoole, founder of the organization, emphasized.
The environmental activist seeks to make citizens “daily changes” to minimize the immense amount of materials that reach landfills. He emphasized “reduce, reuse and rethink consumption habits.”
In the “pop-ups” sabbatinos, from 10:00 am to 1:00 pm, they have Liampier volunteers and employees, as well as municipal Loíza officials. Until April, they have already recovered more than 5,000 pounds of recyclable material. In addition, they have performed more than 65 coastal cleaning events, eliminating more than 52,000 pounds of waste.
“Our goal is to be replicated in other communities and municipalities,” Guzmán emphasized about the recycling station, which began in October and has already impacted more than 350 people.
While the first Saturday of events collected around 80 pounds of recyclable material, the other collected have grown “exponentially”, to collect more than 1,500 pounds in the last one, he said.
“We have seen that practitioners have improved in the identification of materials. We have a collaboration with IFCO Recyclingand they handle them, ”said the director of the organization, who obtained a scholarship of the Ford Foundation until July.
In collaboration with the Puerto Rican Composting Company Taisthey have educated about the separation of food waste at home. They have also joined efforts with the San Juan Bay Estuary So that, in recycling events, they can raise awareness about water quality and the importance of used oil diversion.
“We saw the solid waste management problem in this coast following tourism activity. There is a lot of material, and there is not enough infrastructure to handle it responsibly. It is a call to action and to raise awareness in different sectors”, He stressed.
Within the development of educational strategies, Clean published, in 2018, a Free guide of local resources for an “eco -conscious” life.