Zero Waste Challenge. 12. Responsible Consumption and Production
Description
The "Zero Waste Challenge" project was developed by the Moema Viezzer Environmental Education Observatory, research, and extension group of the Universidade Federal da Integração Latino-Americana (UNILA), whose action contributes with management actions and environmental education in the trinational region of the Iguazú. The activities were an invitation to society to change their lifestyles and values concerning garbage. The participative workshops built with the people current knowledge and practices for a sustainable life routine using the principles: Rethink the consumption; Reuse the materials; Reduce consumption; Recycle the materials and Compost the garbage.
The primary objective is to awaken awareness concerning the impacts of our lifestyle on the planet, evidencing the existing relationships between garbage, health, ecology, and regional integration. In this sense, the "Zero Waste Challenge" aims to sensitize people especially in the waste matter and reflect on consumption habits, based on the understanding of the indissociable link between personal and environmental health, and health with the mode of current production.<br />
All the projects of the Observatory are linked to the Research-Action-Participant methodology, people who learn by participating, because we have as a policy the construction of Sustainable Societies with global responsibility, restoring the unity of the human being with Nature in a transformative way and emancipatory. Then, the first challenge was from the working group. We had the assignment of developing a participatory workshop whose audience would be the entire trinational region, characterized by its diversity of cultures, ethnicities, age, and language, since in the trinational region Portuguese are spoken, Spanish and Guarani too. The second was established through diffusion, and precisely what would be the dissemination strategies of the project, finally the supplies need to be reused objects and generate the minimum possible environmental liability in the activities to serve as a practical example of waste<br />
According to these principles, the workshops were prepared based on generating themes and the most appropriate methodology was the circle of knowledge, where everyone exchanged their practices and knowledge. They also shared scientific data on the production of waste in the region and strategies to change the lifestyle concerning that issue. After the round in the circle, the class was divided into smaller groups to make the products sustainable. Since UNILA is a bilingual university, the teachers and the instructors were prepared to address the linguistic diversity of the participants. The Motim Naipi neighborhood mothers club was also a partner in the recollection of the recycled materials. Within the framework of the dissemination strategy in all the propaganda media, we have the support of the Radio Agua website, journalists from the city who support environmental causes, newspapers from UNILA and the Network of Environmental Educators, the Educator Collective of the Paraná Basin 3. We also made outreach with pamphlets doing door-to-door in the community center of the Youth Center, which live in a state of social vulnerability.<br />
Overcoming the difficulties, we managed to reach an average audience of 40 people per workshop, mostly women, elderly and young. A mobilization group was created through online conversation applications, where participants could disclose the register of practices in their daily lives and share their doubts in maintaining a more sustainable lifestyle.<br />
Another group of alliances was the city's environmentalists who work with permaculture, an association of family and organic farmers. They contributed by teaching composting and agroforestry techniques, mainly with food and natural materials for the practical workshops of planting and reforestation of sustainable yards.
For the "Zero Waste Challenge" to be able to endure for all the diversity and amount of environmental impact in the region the workshops were carried out in the following distribution: the offices were held on a Saturday with an approximate duration of 2 and a half hours, which were presented a chronogram established with the different activities. Such as: as the production of hygiene products and beauty products, cleaning products and natural alternatives to "poisons," composting, ways to make remedies and treatments natural. Garbage separation station, healthy food and vegetable garden in glasses, furniture from reused materials, reuse of clothes / sustainable fashion and notebooks and handcrafted presents, finally sustainable yards. In the workshop of cleaning products which presented different recipes for the elaboration of them through eco-friendly and sustainable elements such as detergent, disinfectant for bathing, deodorants, among others. These implementations for an environmental awareness focused mainly on waste, are applied ecologically friendly, simple, practical, healthy and also economic techniques. This reuse and use generate the economy and reduce the quantity of garbage produced.
The use of non-industrialized substances and durable containers, outside of polluting materials, favors the reduction of environmental pollution and of the body itself.
It is through the “monthly workshops" that they reached the participation of university students, social and environmental movements and members of the Vila União community, where the youth center is, partner. In each workshop, they carried out products that could be taken to their homes for personal use, with recipes. There were also practical tools that helped the process of implementing the new sustainable lifestyle.
Thus, from these practical experiences to develop the materials and products that we need for every day, it is sought to stimulate the autonomy of the individuals and the collective and solidarity organization. The project was an opportunity for the Environmental Observatory to mobilize people socially, from education and environmental information to collaborate for the necessary monitoring in the region. The sustainable education practices promoted by the workshops create a social observation network to accompany and subsidize the implementation of municipal policies for the integrated management of solid waste in the region.
Through the offices made it was possible to observe that the approach of the community to the environment was achieved with the CEJU and with the university students, beyond the approximations with other institutions interested in being part of the project. The "Eco-museum of Itaipu” invited the Observatory to replicate the participatory methodology of the Challenge in the project "Roads of waste" developed with the association of the elderly in the neighborhood of Vila C. The Youth Center wanted to work on the project only with the youth and teenagers that was called "Moema Viezzer Joven". As well as the club of mothers, schools and other institutions have already expressed interest in implementing the "Zero Waste Challenge" as an environmental awareness program. Even from other municipalities in the region too.
The change of sustainable habits created a network of social mobilization that works as a tool of social control of civil society for public power. Since the group became involved consequently, the municipalities of the tri-national region elaborate an integrated waste management policy, as much of the environmental problems were related to garbage is shared by both cities in terms of mobility of people in the tri-national border region.
The Zero Garbage Challenge brought the waste guideline to the media, so we observed that the three cities that took initiatives to improve the selective collection service in the neighborhoods and the emphasis on reverse logistics networks. Even, the city of Foz do Iguaçu has approved a law that prohibits the use of plastic straws in establishments in 2018. For the high number of tourists that the region receives that is a relevant indicator.
All the positive results of the project made the workshops part of a permanent course of environmental education for the sustainability of UNILA, which will be implementing it in 2019 with the name of "Homes without garbage.”
The project also received a prize in the 2nd General Place of Innovacities - Sustainability Category promoted by ABIPIR - International Association of Innovative Inventors, Scientists and Entrepreneurs with the stamp of the International Federation of Inventors' Associations - IFIA, supports the largest Fair every year of Innovation in Latin America, in this space projects from all over America compete. The award reveals the recognition of the results of the project.
Another restriction has to do with the low participation of people from neighboring cities, although the material and equipment were prepared to be bilingual, people had difficulty arriving at the place of meeting in the city of Foz do Iguaçu. And the workshops could not be held in Argentina and Paraguayan cities, because despite the fact that UNILA was the first international university in the region, the transboundary locality agreements have not yet passed, so the buses and the mediating teachers of the workshops cannot cross the border without liberation of the MEC country, that liberation takes months, that is, a protocol that made the realization of the workshops within the programming impossible.
In addition to the restrictions mentioned, the leadership of the University and the environmental educators in the region was fundamental to establish alliances and carry out the environmental education project for sustainability.
The choice for the generating subject of the ¨Homes without waste¨ is based on the ethics of caring for the planet and all the consciences of the community of life, because to take care of the earth, it is necessary, to begin with, the place we live, our house and our body.
Likewise, we help to reveal the importance of domestic work for the definition and classification of what comes to be discarded.
The advantage of working with the female public, through the Mothers' Club, was a natural process of building learned communities mobilized by the work of the Observatory, we perceive that women are the most interested and committed to planetary care. They were the ones who were looking for us with the demand to make natural products and ecological tips to take care of the house. But we environmental educators, we already know for a long time that women are the main mobilization actors when it comes to nature conservation. In this sense, the community movement of the Mother Clubs in Brazil has been an important tool for the construction of women's citizenship and empowerment, despite not being part of the repertoire of principles of the movement, breaking the role of women with the sexual social contract.
One of the principles of Environmental Education for the construction of sustainable societies is gender equity because the domination of patriarchy ruled masculine values of domination and violence so harmful to the conservation of life on the planet. Therefore, the implementation of the ethics of care involves building the dynamic balance in male-female relationships, including men in the tasks of domestic work and caring for the planet through maternal education.
Another learning path will be the expansion towards the neighboring cities. With the elaboration of the course transmitted in EAD, a possibility that is already being developed together with the pedagogical sector of UNILA, so that the experience in Latin American and Caribbean territory can be replicated since we have the possibility of translating it in Spanish with support by the University. But the application of the agreement of border towns is already underway, which will allow us to move and carry out the course in other bordering cities in Argentina and Paraguay.
What we notice the most is the dissatisfaction of the citizens of the tri-national region with the lousy management of solid waste. The lack of selective collection in the city, the neglect concerning the cooperative of recyclable material collectors, the contamination of the soil, water and air by pesticides and electromagnetic pollution, the pruning of trees, deforestation, burning and all diseases and health damages that these claims indicate as diagnostic. Through reports and a bulletin, the Observatory has been an instrument of political action that promotes the efficient management of the issues it observes, mainly on the subject of urban solid waste. In the separation of waste, the alarming data of consumer behavior in the region led the Observatory team to start the Zero Waste movement, challenging the city to reduce the irresponsible waste disposal and animating the population to reduce consumption.Today, what was a challenge became a socio-environmental network movement. The technologies used by this project were the social innovations produced by Brazilian environmental educators, especially Moema Libera Viezzer, through an education in which all learn by participating, we can build a culture of sustainability. In the long term, when more zero waste lifestyle learning communities are organized, we will be very close to living in a sustainable society. This "Edu action" more systematized around the reduction of waste, with conditions to promote reflection on the behavior of people concerning the residue of household garbage, because without a change in the action, public waste management policies will lose the effectiveness. In this regard, investment in education and edu-communicative actions who thematized the issue of waste is critical because currently Latin America and the Caribbean has the most significant sources of natural resources, based on the abundance much of the economic activities that are linked to the exploitation of those resources. And a large part of that waste is composed of domestic organic matter, which can generate energy through chemical processes. As well as other solid waste can and should be recycled and transformed, avoiding the contamination of soil, water and the use of land that could be used for the production of organic food. UNILA in projects such as the Observatory serves to fulfill its social mission, as a public educational institution, an agent of regional integration, promoting research, education, and extension for one of the most significant environmental problems in the region.Continuing education, criticism and practice formed in a building leadership group networks for the construction of Sustainable Societies is what changes the behavior of people. Each person who adheres to the zero waste routine becomes an example for their community and learning community for the global village.UNILA and its partners join the ODS Brazil University Network to contribute together with the strategic program of the UNDP 2030 Agenda, mainly because the implementation of the SDGs in the tri-national region requires regional integration networks because together we can change our behavior and our area, assuming our civic responsibility towards the planet.
https://www.clickfozdoiguacu.com.br/foz-iguacu-recebe-oficina-de-reapro…
https://gdia.com.br/projeto-de-extensao-da-unila-realiza-oficina-gratui…
http://www2.webradioagua.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=517:f…
http://abipir.org.br/projetos-de-extensao-e-pesquisa-da-unila-sao-premi…
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| Name | Description |
|---|---|
| 14.1 | By 2025, prevent and significantly reduce marine pollution of all kinds, in particular from land-based activities, including marine debris and nutrient pollution |
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Suellen Mayara Péres de Oliveira, PhD