During 2017, WWF Guatemala / Mesoamerica carried out several activities to promote a recycling culture in Guatemala, under the learning-by-doing concept. Beyond educating about responsable consumption, these activities have also established environmental contests aimed to school kids and youngsters, university students and citizens. To date, a total of 28,134 pounds of solid wastes have been recovered and 72,454 people have been reached.
The dynamics of this initiative has consisted in conducting education activities and recovering materials to be recycled, which are delivered to a recycling company. Besides this strategy, permanent recycling stations have been located in different areas of Guatemala City, were the citizens are motivated to assist and continue with the acquired habit.
These actions contribute to two goals that WWF has established at a global scale: conserving fresh water and oceans. This education program responds to what is foreseen in these goals as to reducing the impact of the human impact over water bodies and oceans.
The contest dynamics
The activities include contests that have been presented to universities and schools, as well as other defined groups. During several months, students in schools, universities and residential condominiums to begin or continue with the separation of recycling materials.
The purpose is that participants perform this separation at home, avoiding throwing solid wastes that may be recycled. They are invited to begin with this separation, with enough time to bring these materials to the activities were WWF receives them.
In each activation, a team from WWF receives these solid wastes, weigh them and register the data of the materials: plastics, paper, carton, tin cans, glass and Tetra Pak containers, in order to have useful monitoring information on the collected pounds of materials.
This year, WWF Guatemala / Mesoamerica will continue developing these activities and will begin the same kind of Project in Honduras, hoping to have similar positive results.