Eva González, Lucía Sánchez and Yolanda Sevilla might, at first glance, not have much in common. However, these three women of different ages, professions and places of origin are similar in one thing: they have decided to put aside excuses and get hands to work helping to take care of the environment—each within its scope of action. For this reason, this October 15, Rural Women’s Day, highlights all those women who want to get involved in caring for nature, aware that it is also possible to act from small places.
This is the case of Lucía Sánchez, teacher at the Cabanillas de la Sierra Grouped Rural School. This town in Madrid’s Guadarrama mountain range has just over 900 inhabitants and, precisely because of its location, Sánchez’s students already know from a very young age what it means to know and care for the environment. “They are very used to being in nature and they take care of it and any project we propose in this regard excites them,” he says. That was one of the reasons why she signed up for Naturaliza, an Ecoembes environmental education project that seeks to train teachers to bring an environmental perspective to their classes with maximum respect and sensitivity towards the environment and thus be able to instill it in their students through contact with nature and active pedagogies.
“Once you are a Naturaliza teacher, there are a lot of resources on the website on topics related to the environment and nature, then they have very good advice that resolves any questions or guides you if you want to do a project,” says Sánchez. In their case, the children were interested in learning and carrying out a project related to ants. “We had an anthill and Naturaliza just offered some workshops with a boy who was explaining to us about insects,” he adds. They also joined a project called the forest in which the protagonist was an ant that they named Filomena and whose news and orders they wait expectantly.
The fight against ‘garbage’
Sánchez’s students used to carry a bag to collect the trash they found every time they went on a field trip. Eva González did the same thing every time she went to the beach in Ibiza, her place of residence. “Every day we go to the beach, I carry a bag, I walk around and collect plugs, plastic balls, pieces of nets and everything I see that is plastic,” he explains.
So after several years of following the ‘LIBERA, united against garbage’ projects, created by the NGO SEO/BirdLife in alliance with Ecoembes, she decided to join them as a volunteer in Llanes, where she spent the summer. “It is an ideal project, it is a question of awareness, of what we are going to leave to our children and our descendants. If everyone does a little bit, which is picking up some caps when you’re walking, even though it doesn’t seem like a big deal, we can do something because together we are a lot of people,” says González, who, although he complains about the lack of support from the mayor’s office, , it is clear that he would repeat.
Recycling in rural areas
Yolanda Sevilla is mayor of Linares de Mora (Aragón) and first vice president of the Aragonese Federation of Municipalities, Counties and Provinces (FAMCP). With just over 230 inhabitants, this municipality makes an effort with recycling that Seville itself describes as “positive but with room for improvement.” For Seville, “recycling is not only a management task, but a commitment that must be assumed by both the Administration and all its neighbors.”
Of the more than 650,000 yellow and blue containers spread throughout Spain, Linares de Mora has an increasing number that they have also tried to integrate into the environment with stone walls. They have also collaborated in the community composting pilot project of the Gudar-Javalambre Region. “Fostering alliances between towns to share resources and knowledge can be key to improving efficiency in waste management,” says Sevilla, also mentioning the joint work of city councils and Ecoembes to bring recycling closer to citizens. For her, there is still room for improvement and she seeks to continue advancing in this direction. “We want to go a step further with initiatives that delve into the separation of organic waste and also the correct management of bulky waste,” he points out.
Sevilla explains that his objective is to improve the separation and avoid the mixing of materials beyond organic waste since in rural areas many residents already recycle in their homes by giving these food waste to animals. Furthermore, he is very clear that being a small place offers advantages in terms of environmental protection. “Small municipalities, like Linares de Mora, have a key advantage over large cities: the proximity and rapid response capacity of their neighbors. It is easier to coordinate and involve a small community, where neighbors know each other and the feeling of belonging to the town is stronger.”
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