Waste Management In Piedras Gordas

November 2012-November 2013

Early on in my service, community members from Piedras Gordas and I identified waste management as the community’s largest environmental and health concern.  During a community meeting with my boss we decided that this would be focus of our primary community project.  I left that meeting feeling relieved that we had identified and agreed upon a tangible issue that we wanted to tackle.  However it was also a bit daunting to know that from then on the community would turn to me as the authority on waste management, and that I would be responsible for forming community members into a waste management group that would tackle vast and multifaceted issue.

After that first meeting I spent the next few weeks planning out how to motivate community members to form a group and plan activities that would finally address the community’s waste management problems.  To generate interest for the upcoming waste management meeting I visited community members that I thought would be an asset to the group, publicized the first waste management meeting at the school and during community events, and created a meeting outline and project plan. 

We spent the first meeting identifying the environmental, economic, health and social problems garbage was causing in the community, and the source of those problems.  We then brainstormed activities that could be done to remedy these issues.  After the discussion I explained that the only way to carry out these activities and address waste management in a sustainable manner would be to form a waste management group.  The looks on the faces of some of the attendees made it was clear that not everyone had come to the meeting with the intention of becoming a member of a waste management group.  I told them to think about what we had talked about that day and that there would be another meeting in couple weeks where we would form the group and it’s action plan.

 It was pleasing to see that many of the same people showed up for the next meeting and they had encouraged some new faces to attend as well.  During that meeting we were able to form a directiva (board of directors) (president, vice president, secretary, treasurer and sector captains [people responsible for informing people in their neighborhood about the group’s activities]).  We agreed that we would eventually like to have a recycling project in the school but that we would start off by having community clean up days and fundraisers.   To date we hold monthly meetings with the board of directors and almost all of the original members have remained active (we did change the president after a few months, which has been a very positive development for the group). The name of the group is Unidos Contra La Basura (UCB) (United Against Garbage).          

Participants an the first community waste management meeting

The waste management group has become active force in the community in a number of ways:

             Like many places throughout the developing world, most of the garbage in Panama is disposed of by burning it in open fires on personal property.  Although it is an effective way to prevent garbage from piling up around the house, it has disastrous impacts on human health and the environment.  Aside from the fact that there were not many preferable and economical alternatives to disposing of waste, many people simply didn’t know about all of the negative effects that burning garbage causes.  So one of the first steps to improving waste management practices was holding waste management education meetings in the community and to teach all of my students at the school about the dangers of burning garbage.

Current waste management practices in many areas of Panamá

The group’s long-term goal is to prevent any garbage from being discarded in public places, but large-scale behavior change is a long process that involves a number of factors (cultural norms, education, attractive alternatives, etc.).  So to keep the community clean in the meantime we started holding community trash pick-up days.  At first we had them once a month, but lately we’ve had them much less frequently as a result of the success of the group’s other initiatives.  Thus far we've had 8 community trash pick-ups (including at an illegal dumping site in a stream running through the community), and organized for transportation of the trash to a dump in a nearby community.  The transportation has been provided through the ANAM (the Panamanian environmental agency) and the alcalde (the governor for the region) from La Pintada (the closest large community). 

In another effort to prevent the build up of trash in public spaces, we were able to solicit from the representante (the mayor of our district) a donation of 10 metal tanques (tanks) that we are planning to use as public trashcans.  We are currently in the process of raising funds to build "houses" to protect the tanques from rain and theft.  We were also able to solicit two plastic trashcans from the alcalde, which we placed in the park in the center of town.  As a result Piedras Gordas has it’s first public trash cans.

Yarineth and I with the town's first public trash can

            Another way to decrease trash in the community is to use waste materials to make sellable artisan crafts.  I asked a couple of Peace Corps volunteers, that are working in communities with existing artisan groups, for their help in teaching people how to make artisan crafts with reused materials.  Three Peace Corps and a number of their community members came to Piedras Gordas to teach us how to make purses and hand bags out of soda lids and chip bags, and jewelry out of magazines.  Everyone seemed to enjoy the workshop, and a number of community members in Piedras Gordas have started to make their own bags.

Artisan bowl made from reused paper

Artisan seminars

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            We have held a number of fundraisers to help raise the money required to finance the group’s projects.  Income has been generated through bingo games, raffles, food sales, and movie nights at the school.  Community members and local politicians have also demonstrated their support for the group through financial and material donations.

           

Movie Night in Piedras Gordas

Our largest undertaking as a group has been the recycling project in the school. 

Last November my boss and I took members of the directiva of UCB to visit the community of Membrillo where a Peace Corps volunteer and her community members had started a successful recycling project. It was incredible helpful to see how they organized their recycling project at the school and to speak with members of the waste management group.  The trip allowed the members of UCB to start to envision how we could implement a similar project at the school in Piedras Gordas.  It also made us realize the important role that economies of scale play in making the project economically sustainable.  The trip made my community members more confident in their ability to run our own recycling project and motivated them to start working towards that goal.

The director of the school in Membrillo explaining the school's recycling project

Membrillo's recycling project in action

We implemented our recycling project in the school at the beginning of the school year (March).  We hold one recycling day per month.  The waste is the transported by the alcalde of La Pintada or ANAM to the Recimental recycling business in Santa Clara or Rio Grande.  The grade that recycles the most (avg. per student) wins a pizza party, and second place wins a smaller edible prize.  At the end of the trimester the students that have recycled the most for the trimester win an environmentally themed trip. 

Piedras Gordas' first recycling day

5th grade wins the first pizza party

 

At the end of the first trimester we took 11 students and their parents to the Omar Torrijos National Park in Coclé.  Although the park is only an hour away from Piedras Gordas it was the first time that all of the students and most of their parents had ever visited the park.  At the end of the second trimester we took 15 students and their parents to a zoo a couple of hours away.  As with the trip to the national park, this was the first time most of them had visited the zoo and that part of the province.  At the end of the year we will take 65 community members and their parents to an aquarium and a biodiversity museum in Panama City.

 

National Park Trip

Trip to the Zoo

At the beginning of the second semester we started including the Tele Educativa (afternoon classes for students that left school, and now are returning to receive their high school diploma) in the recycling project. As a result we have 85 new participants, ages 15-62 years old.  Many of these students come from nearby communities; this has allowed the project to expand geographically.  75% of the funds earned from selling their recycled materials are be used to help the Tele Educativa to buy uniforms and instruments for their band, and 25% of the funds go to UCB.

Since March we have recycled 9486.42 pounds of plastic, tetrapak, glass, cardboard, batteries, and paper.  A third grader named Analia has been our biggest recycler of the year.  Thus far she has recycled 1347.65 pounds of garbage.  We’ve made $648.70 for our group through selling the recycled materials.  This may not seem like a large sum of money but its significance becomes more apparent when you take into account that the daily salary for unskilled labor is $7 a day ($5 if the employer provides lunch) and that coming up with $.05 a day for your child’s lunch money can be a burdening task. 

The parents and students in the community are very excited about the project, and have been contributing greatly with their time and recyclable materials.  More than anything I am most pleased to see the changes in people's attitudes and knowledge of waste management.  Many people have learned how to identify recyclable materials, where they can be deposited, and what it means to recycle.  As a sign of our success we have had members from nearby communities come to Piedras Gordas to recycle their waste and/or ask how they could start a recycling project in their community. 

At the end of the year UCB will be throwing an environmental themed party for the students, their parents, the teachers, local politicians and other government officials to recognize all of their hard work and thank them for their support.

The directiva of our group deserves so much credit for their hard work, especially our president, Yarineth Sánchez.  Without Yarineth's leadership and tireless effort teaching community members about waste management, it is unlikely that we would be experiencing this level of success!

            We’re not the only ones that have recognized the success of the recycling project.  Later this month SerTV, a national station is coming to Piedras Gordas to film a program about the waste management group and the recycling project.  ANAM has asked me to travel to nearby communities to help them form waste management groups and recycling projects.  I attended ANAM’s national conference to speak about our work in Piedras Gordas with ANAM officials and environmental volunteers throughout the country.  I also had the opportunity to train other Peace Corps volunteers about waste management projects and environmental education.  Last month we presented our work at an environmental fair in Penonomé (the provincial capital).

Speaking At The ANAM Seminar