As life flows over the bridge Juan Pablo Duarte, beneath its structures an intense battle is being fought to combat the pollution of the rivers that surround the city. It is a project of recycling triple impact: social, economic and environmental.
Four institutions have joined forces to reduce the dumping of solid waste into the water resources of Greater Santo Domingo: the Foundation AecoGroup, Eco Bottle RDthe Association of Environmental Sanitation Foundations for the Recycling (Asofunsarec) and the Mayor’s Office of the National District.
In a space of approximately 300 meters located on the approach of the bridge and facilitated by the Mayor’s Office of the National District, a center operates gathering for the reception and processing of cardboard, plasticstetrapack, tin cans and glassesThe materials arrive through programs implemented in communities, companies, shopping malls and individuals.
Ruben Sanchez, executive director of the Foundation AecoGroupone of the entities involved in the project, explained that many people bring their waste voluntarily. According to Sánchez, the collections vary, but on average they reach about 50,000 pesos per month. These funds, together with the support from an international foundation, allowing us to cover operational costs and pay the payroll of our collaborators.
Bags of love
“We delivered a bag of food to the people involved in the collection process, not necessarily with what is collected in the same environment, but at a general level. We do the same with the schools that are part of the program,” said Sanchez.
The program was created with the aim of helping the environment and currently receives between 6,000 and 7,000 kilos of cardboard and around 2,000 bottles monthly. The center of gathering It has a compacting machine to process bottles plastics and paper.
“Dominican Republic It is a clean country, but we lack a little education “to know how to live in clean environments. We are talking about generations that have the habit of consuming and throwing waste into the street,” said Sánchez.
Recycling of bottles
The Foundation AecoGroup works in alliance with Eco Bottle RDa company that recycles and processes glasses within the same establishment. Braulio BarrÃa Vargas, a former Chilean military officer living in the country, leads this project using his experience in glass treatment.
BarrÃa clarifies that they do not process bottles that have returns to companies, such as those of recognized beers and soft drinks. Together with the vice president of Eco Bottle, Joshua Hilario, they are in charge of selecting, washing, and removing the labels from each bottle. bottleThey are then cut with a diamond-toothed saw and subjected to a polishing process.
Further education and support official
The director of the Foundation+Eco Bottle RDBraulio BarrÃa, says that the recycling of bottle does not have support in the country and understands that there should be entities that take into account that sector. “There is no organization governmental Let him come here and say, well, how cool, what you are doing is triple impact. We are going to contribute, to make some injection of money, what do you need? We pay the employee, but we do not have that type of support“. The center of gathering located under the bridge Duarte is a space of recyclingawareness-raising and production that reduces the negative impact of solid waste on the environmentwhile having an economic impact through job creation.
