We are UrbaNatura, an Association dedicated to promoting the practice of Sustainability on a community scale in the region of Los Alcores (Seville).
This is a pilot project of community education to generate a change of awareness about the citizen's responsibility to recycle. At UrbaNatura we decided that, in order to generate a change of awareness on a community scale, we should start by inviting neighbours to experience what can be done with their pruning waste.
It is a proposal to go from being simply a ‘Community’ to a ‘Learning Community’ with 500 people involved in a residential nucleus of neighbours in Carmona (Seville) that generates 4 tons of Bio-waste per year.
Reusing organic matter (Bio-waste) is something that is still alive as a reference in the collective memory of most of the neighbours of this Community. Many did or saw others do the transformation of organic matter into compost in their own homes. Therefore, the recycling of organic waste from the garden and orchards is a relatively ‘fresh’ meaning to be rescued when we talk about a change of habits in favour of recycling.
Main features and goals of the crowdfunding campaign
Our project is located in the outskirts of the city of Carmona and consists of a pilot experience to involve a community of neighbours to modify their practices in the recycling of organic waste. In 2021 we created a recycling point for Bio-waste in the Community itself and each person is responsible for bringing their pruning and plant waste directly. Once it is deposited and with the help of the Association's team, the separation, classification, shredding and composting process begins. In this process we take advantage of the opportunity to train the neighbours in different aspects linked not only to the biochemistry of composting but also to the concrete effects of changing habits on a community scale. In this way, the neighbours experience directly that 100% of their pruning is recycled in its entirety, closing the circle of organic matter recovery and generating 0 waste in the process. It is the experience itself that initiates the opening to understand how something apparently ‘disposable’ can become a value of enormous importance for both individual and collective benefit.
Our aim with this campaign is to consolidate the pilot project as a permanent project. In order to achieve this, we need to add one more worker to the team and new working tools.
Why this is important
As a pilot experience, we started by inviting this Community to become aware that their organic waste (pruning and plant waste) IS NOT WASTE. From this point, we offered them an experience to see how all their pruning can be transformed into high-value products such as compost, shredded wood chips for mulching and firewood for their homes. In this way, the neighbours themselves progressively became active and involved in the recycling circle from their own experience, opening up to understand how something apparently ‘disposable’ can become a good of great individual and collective value.
This is learning and change of consciousness from experience.
Team and experience
Since 2021 we have been inviting these neighbours to find out what their volume of organic waste is. After making this reality visible to them, we show them what they have done so far with this type of material and what direct impacts the waste management model they have followed so far has had on them and their habitat. Faced with a massive practice of burning or disposal of pruning to an unknown dumping point, our project directly offers them the experience of transforming their own organic material into a reusable material for the benefit of their own soils, gardens and orchards.
The team is currently made up of staff from the Association, an operator for the recycling point and a specialist in graphic and audiovisual design for the training activities.
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