Jesús Rey Peña | Sostenibilidad y economías ambientales, Titanes Caracol 2025
Mitigating Environmental Impact through Recycling Initiatives
Introduction to the Initiative
- Jesús María Rey Peña introduces himself and highlights the issue of plastic pollution, noting that fish often mistake plastics for food.
- He describes the chaotic state of environmental contamination in schools and emphasizes his initiative aimed at reducing plastic waste in rivers, seas, and wetlands.
Student Involvement in Recycling
- Students actively participate by bringing plastics from home and utilizing materials available at their institution to create eco-friendly furniture and containers.
- The process involves filling bottles with leftover papers, sealing them, and eventually transforming these into recycled furniture that resembles purchased items.
Transformation Process
- Collected bottle caps are sorted and processed using a machine with teacher assistance; this mixture consists of 60% plastic, 20% cement, and 20% sand.
- The transformation from waste to useful products is highlighted as students express fascination with turning large amounts of plastic into small bags of shredded material for ecological bricks.
Growth of the Initiative
- Initially starting with 50 students, the program has expanded significantly to involve 175,000 students across 30 municipalities in Magdalena.
Core Principles of Recycling
- The initiative operates on three fundamental principles: reduce, recycle, and reuse.
- Jesús emphasizes that beyond recycling education for children, this effort also benefits community mothers associated with San Juan del Córdoba.