Ecobreves – BRAZIL: Recycling Educates and Pays

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 28 2002 (IPS) - The environmental education project of Brazil’s Friends of the Environment, which is based on recycling efforts, improved the grades of 380 children last year in five rural schools of the Itabuna municipality, in the northeastern state of Bahia, and created new sources of income for their families. The authorities plan to expand the project this year to 2,600 students in 40 rural schools and several urban schools in this municipality of 200,000 inhabitants, coordinator Sumara Midlej Café told Tierramérica.

Using glass containers, paper, and plastic bags, children make baskets, rugs, cleaning items and decorations that they then sell in the city. These activities are utilized to introduce math lessons and other topics.

The families in the region, hit by a plague that devastated the local cacao harvest, are also taking part in the program, which is providing them with a new source of income.