New air of recycle

Recycle is an important topic in the last years in Bogota, the principal universities of the city have created a lot of campaigns about how to do of the city a good place.

By: Alejandra Hormaza 

Bogota has big problems of recycling and garbage, the government has done different programs and solution for this. Universities, some companies, schools and other institutes works with private polices, because recycling has become one of the principal challenges of Bogota.

The Recycling Program in the Higher Education Institutes, (or PRIES, as it known in Spanish), is a network was created for help and support all the recycling programs that exist in the universities and is conformed by 28 of them. In 2009, Javeriana university organized a diplomat with this network and it’s members. Universities such as Jorge Tadeo Lozano, Sergio Arboleda, Rosario, followed this examples and implemented projects into their institutes.

Angélica Suárez, coordinates the recycling program in Sergio Arboleda University, where they have an agreement with Koala foundation (works with single mothers in Colombia). The University collected all their recycling and

each week, the Foundation pick it up and separates the scrap. The Sergio Arboleda’s project also has an “ecology points” with a Color- Coded in the bins, that was created in the PRIES diplomat. “We have a three furniture where the students and the teachers put their recycling scraps, it was an own idea and it has worked a lot”, said Angélica Suárez.

  

The three furniture in Sergio Arboleda University.

Jorge Tadeo Lozano University works with the PRIES points too, Nadia Velásquez manages the project in this university, she explained that a recycling cooperative is who recollected our weekly recycle. In this institute the recycling polices are different in each faculty, “In the Arts Faculty started to make art works with cellphones, the Design Faculty has created chairs with bottles and the Industrial Engineer Faculty reuse the paper and scraps for make toys for the poor kids”, said Nadia Velásquez in the interview. Into the university you can see the color bins and in the office the administratives has a coffee cup that replace the traditional cardboard cups.

 

Coffee Cups

Like these two universities, 28 universities has their own recycle programs with a new ideas for promote this activity and make of this some different. PRIES gave a lot of ideas to these institutes; “Green Office” is a concourse in the offices of the universities where the administratives create boxes for the recycle and they have to use their imagination and creativity for make it different. The winner office has an award who depends in each institute.

Clearly, Bogota has a new recycling conscience and each place in the city is trying to do the same. It’s hard to change the mind of the citizens but it’s not impossible.