Ecobreves – URUGUAY: Phonebooks Are for Recycling

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

MONTEVIDEO, Oct 28 2006 (IPS) - From Oct. 23 to Nov. 12, the campaign “Your Pages Are Re-Usable” is collecting old telephone books for recycling in the Uruguayan capital. The initiative is part of the environmental education program of Repapel, organized by the non-governmental research center CEADU, the company Volt Directories, with support from the Montevideo municipal government.

Federico Baráibar, a Repapel volunteer, explained to Tierramérica that the effort will be focused on the 400,000 books of Yellow Pages distributed by Volt in 2005 in the capital, whose population is about 1.5 million.

Participating in Repapel are more than 25,000 children, some 500 teachers and 75 sponsors. The recycled products produced are returned to the school in proportion to the volume of paper that the schools collect.

“What the schools ask for most is toilet paper,” said Baráibar, although they also order notebooks and other paper goods.