Sketches around the world

In our school we have a special trashcan for paper. The containers for glass are green in color, the blue ones are reserved for paper, the yellow ones for packaging.

In this way, processed waste is turned into new objects instead of being left out in the wild or being burnt. This means savings can be made in terms of energy and matter, which in turn protects our planet.

The junk mail that clogs up our mailboxes is just one example: last October, in a single day, each household in Lexy received over one kilogram of advertising in their mailboxes. Over one year, that represents over 72 tons of paper for our village alone... What a waste of all those trees cut down for nothing!

The older folk have never learnt to recycle, so we are teaching them, explaining to them. Each of us is trying, at home and all around, to get people used to sorting their waste so that there are even more things recycled.

In order to make older people aware, we would like to set up signs explaining how useful it is to throw garbage in the garbage can, the danger involved in messing up our planet.

In order to make the very young ones aware, we would like our park to have "novelty" trashcans in the shape of animals or characters, with their mouth wide open ready to receive the papers. They could even be made out of recycled plastic. We think this would be a good way of getting young people into good habits!

Other ideas could help adults and adolescents to respect nature: advertising posters about waste, television commercials about nature, electronic games about pollution...

• Fadila Sammari
  fadila.sammari@veolia-proprete.fr