Aserradores, Nicaragua
In April 2022, we were able to travel to Aserradores in the north of Nicaragua. With a team of five and a backpack with already 3 successful implemented projects in Colombia.
In the first days we defined together with the community the following goals:
- Call for teenager who would like to become so-called “Plastic Heroes”, with the aim of accompanying us closely during the project and continuing the project in a long-term and sustainable manner.
- Identification of critical points and signposting with ecological messages
- Playful environmental activities with children and young people
- Education in the households about the recycling system, recycling and the importance of reducing the consumption of plastic bottles.
- Film evenings about important environmental issues
- Getting to know the eco-bottle – “Ecobottle
- Beach and street clean-ups
Together with the dedication of each and everyone of the community we were able to achieve all the goals.
We were visiting 4 different schools to present Plasticaware and raise awareness about the topic.
26 young adults from the community became part of the Plastic Heroes team. During an intensive workshop day they learned about plastic, plastic pollution, its impact on the environment and how to implement the 3Rs in everyday life. Afterwards, they were able to co-create, support and also lead different initiatives of the project.
In one of the workshops, the Plastic Heroes identified critical points in the community and implemented a strategy with ecological messages to mitigate the risk of becoming a small garbage dump.
Every day we played, crafted and were drawing with the smaller kids. Through playful activities, they learnt a lot about environmental topics.
Together with the plasticheroes we visited around 300 houses and donated each household a reusable bottle
We organized two movie nights, where every child had to bring at least 10 clean plastic bottles and received a ticket to enter in return. With these two events we collected over 650 bottles.
With two big street and beach clean-ups with the Plastic Heroes we were able to motivate a lot of people from the community.
Last but not least a very important achievement was the set-up of a process on how to deal with the collected Plastic. We found a recycling company in Chinandega that buys the collected plastic from Aserradores.
The project in Nicaragua was a wonderful experience. The community is indescribably open and was very happy that we could develop something together with them. One Plastic Heroe said, “im going to do everything I have learned with Plasticware and try to convince other people in the community to have an Aserradores without trash”.
For more details, have a look at the detailed document here
If you like our initiative and want to support environmental change through activities that reduce plastic pollution, you can donate right here.
