About This Project
The sustainable recovery of secondary raw materials through the reuse and the recycling of discarded products is more important than ever before and civil society organisations may play an important role in contributing to environmental protection and the associated quality of life for the future generations. In this context, involving the younger age groups of population is essential.
CELIM Onlus is an Italian NGO which has been operating in Albania since 1999 and its main focus is the implementation of environmental protection projects. Within our projects, the collaboration with local institutions is fundamental and schools are in a key position to achieve our goals. Environmental education in Albania has been given a boost recently but it still needs major improvements, in terms of quality and quantity. Theory and practice are both crucial in this process and NGOs can be helpful in raising the standards of environmental education in the country.
For this reason, we started a collaboration with Pavarësia School, a technical school based in Vlora (Albania), with whom we recently made a big turtle bin to collect and recycle plastic materials as well as to help raising awareness on environmental protection issues. The “Pavarësia” Technical School has been working for 42 years in the professional training of medium and high-level specialists in various sectors and in recent years has been committed to spreading transversal skills concerning the recovery of waste materials and urban regeneration.
The plastic bottles collected are re-used by PavarësiaSchool students thanks to a self-made machinery which transforms the middle part of the bottles into narrow strips (you can see howit works watching the video above). The strips are then used to make broom’s bristles.
Why we need your help
The current machinery is very helpful and allows us to recycle the most of the bottle but it’s not enough. In fact, it is not possible to recycle the top and the bottom parts of the bottle which nowadays still generate waste. To achieve this goal we need to buy another machine to melt plastic. The melted plastic will be used to create tiles and pavements for the school. In this way, we will be able not to use raw materials, and consequently not to produce waste making a perfect circular economy process.
CELIM NGO and Pavarësia School also participate in some pilot projects of urban renovation and rehabilitation of impoverished neighborhoods in collaboration with the Municipality of Vlora. In this regard, the plastic melted through this machinery could be used to create recycled urban furniture for the city of Vlora.
