WWF Guatemala / Mesoamerica organized a challenge called “Environmentally responsible college student” to motivate students from two universities in Guatemala to practice the 3Rs and responsible consumption. The challenge consisted in conducting activities in these universities every fifteen days, from September to November of this year, where WWF together with a recycling company received recycling materials from students.
At the beginning of the challenge, a talk was given to the students about the challenge and the importance of recycling and adopting responsible consumption practices. Students from the environmental faculties were required to form groups and the group which would deliver more weight of recycling materials would receive an award. At the end of the challenge, both universities collected 18,175 pounds of recycling materials.
Students were invited to make the separation of materials at home, such as plastics, glass and Tetra Pak containers, paper, carton and cans. During the activities, students should dispose these materials in the Green Mobile Stations located in the universities every fifteen days.
The Rafael Landívar University - URL- and the Del Valle de Guatemala University y Universidad Del Valle de Guatemala -UVG- were chosen to conduct this challenge. At URL, the winner team was called “Green Footprint”, integrated by students of the Environmental and Agriculture Sciences, with 2,737 pounds of recycling materials. In total, 7,402 pounds were collected as a result of this challenge in this university.
At UVG, the winning team was section 40 of the Environmental Challenges course, who contributed with 1,526 pounds. In total, in this university 10,773 pounds were collected.
To continue motivating a recycling culture in the long term, with the support from TetraPak, WWF was able to receive an authorization from URL so that a recycling station could be installed in the university in January of 2018 and soon in UVG as well