Creative Recycling - São Paulo, Brazil
Rodrigo Steinman, Elisa Alves Location: São Paulo, Brazil
The most big and impressive action we did was about the garbage produced by us on the school. We took ALL the garbage produced between the time of two days and throwed it in the middle of the salon, where all the students spend the break. We were all dressed up in black and the best part is, we stayed in the middle of the garbage the whole time, playing and living with it". The students were just speechless, staring at us. I'm sure we couldn't touch everyone's mind about the amount of garbage we produce, but when we were putting everything back on the bags there was two younger girls helping us. They said they have changed the way they look to the garbage they produce.
"The group I started after the expedition on my school has grown a lot! We are around 20 young adults now, and I finally got the students from my school to think, reflect and now they have a strong group to act!"
We have already organized two Round Tables (discussion groups) about ‘Students Movement’ during the dictatorship in Brazil and also one about ‘Feminism’. The nice thing about these discussions is that everybody learns and shares and we always get to a nice level of discussion.
There's a traditional Brazilian party in June where the youths dress up in traditional costume and there are many games to play. At the end of each game the winner receives a gift, which until now has always been something stupid, like a cheap plastic toy and other stuff like that. This year’s idea from our environment group was to stop spending money on these useless gifts and start to distribute some nice, constructive gifts instead. The idea was to get all the students at my school to make a toy with recycled material, such as pet.
It was so awesome! Everyone enjoyed making the toys (even the 15/16/17 year-olds) and what’s more, the children loved to receive it as a gift. We started a campaign to collect the recycled material. Then we learnt how to make the toys like the professionals and then we taught the other students how to do it!
Rodrigo Steinman-Creative Recycling
