Eva González, Lucía Sánchez and Yolanda Sevilla may not have much in common at first glance. However, these three women of different ages, professions and places of origin are similar in one respect: they decided to put aside excuses and to make each other hands to work contribute to taking care of the environment, each in their field of action. This is why this October 15, Rural Women’s Day, honors all those women who wish 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 rural group school. This town in the Sierra de Guadarrama, in Madrid, has just over 900 inhabitants and, precisely because of its geographical 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 offer them in this regard excites them,” he says. This is one of the reasons why she enrolled in Naturaliza, an environmental education project from Ecoembes that seeks to train teachers to bring an environmental perspective into their classes with maximum respect and sensitivity to respect for 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 lots of resources on the website on topics related to the environment and nature, then they have really good advice that solves any questions you have or guides you if you want carry out a project,” explains Sánchez. . In their case, the children were interested in learning and doing a project related to ants. “We had an anthill and Naturaliza just offered workshops with a boy who explained insects to us,” he adds. They also joined a project called the forest in which the protagonist was an ant whom they named Filomena and whose news and orders they impatiently awaited.
The fight against “waste”
Sánchez’s students used to carry a bag to collect the trash they found every time they went on an excursion. 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 I pick up caps, plastic balls, pieces of nets and everything I see that is plastic,” he explains .
So, after several years 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’s an ideal project, it’s a question of awareness, of what we are going to leave to our children and our descendants. If everyone does a little, that is, picking up a few caps while walking, even if it doesn’t seem like a big deal, we can do something because together we are a lot of people,” says González, who , even if he complains about the lack of support from the town hall, it is clear that he will repeat it.
Recycling in rural areas
Yolanda Sevilla is mayor of Linares de Mora (Aragon) and first vice-president of the Aragonese Federation of Municipalities, Counties and Provinces (FAMCP). With just over 230 inhabitants, this municipality is making an effort in terms of 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”.
Among the more than 650,000 yellow and blue containers spread throughout Spain, Linares de Mora has a growing number that they have also tried to integrate into the environment with stone walls. They also collaborated on the community composting pilot project in the Gudar-Javalambre region. “Fostering alliances between cities to share resources and knowledge can be key to improving the efficiency of waste management,” says Seville, 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 moving in that direction. “We want to go further with initiatives that deepen the sorting of organic waste as well as the good management of bulky waste,” he emphasizes.
Sevilla explains that its goal is to improve separation and avoid mixing of materials beyond organic waste since in rural areas many residents already recycle at home by feeding this food waste to animals. Plus, it’s very clear about what a small place is. 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 city is stronger.
