"This is not garbage under your feet, but valuable resources!" - decided in the Pervomaisky district of the Yaroslavl region

Authors: Irina Skiba, Vasilisa Skiba, Ludmila Zhirina.

For the third year, the Pervomaisky district of the Yaroslavl region has been actively participating in the activities of the SPARE program related to the problem of separate garbage and recycling of waste of different categories.

In May, the regional coordinators of SPARE helped to hold a competition of school papers on an analytical review of strategies for separate waste collection and recycling in different countries. More than 30 students presented individual and collective works. The discussion of the materials took place on the basis of the School of Biodynamics in the village of Yuryevskoye. Whole families came to this two-day seminar. Schoolchildren, parents, teachers have compiled a general overview of the garbage problem "Summer-2021" with interesting examples and suggestions for schoolchildren throughout the Yaroslavl region. The participants of the seminar proposed many important and necessary aspects for rural areas:

- To organize broad cooperation between residents and the municipal system on waste separation and recycling;

- To continue the information and propaganda anti-garbage work in social networks on regional sites;

- We decided to provide information about general actions, texts and links of scenarios of events about waste management to more than 50 kindergartens, schools and rural clubs in the region;

- To provide assistance in conducting thematic classes, workshops, concerts in six summer school camps, at Festivals in Yaroslavl Eco-settlements;

- To disseminate information about the exhibition "Zero waste and plastic" on the basis of local libraries;

- To involve schoolchildren from Moscow, Vladimir, Ryazan, Voronezh, who will undergo field training practices on the basis of the Ecocenter of the autonomous non-profit organization "Legend of the Russian Estate" in the village of Menchakovo (Yaroslavl Region), to study methods of garbage disposal in rural conditions.

As we can see, the participants of the seminar outlined multilateral plans for 2021. Preschoolers, schoolchildren and adults managed to do a lot of interesting things in June :

1. 2 village meetings were held for families with the participation of municipalities and private businesses. Many schoolchildren acted as participants in a private mini-business working in the field of garbage recycling. An active group of 15 adults and schoolchildren aged 10-16 gathered in different villages, packed and took more than 600 kg of waste paper for recycling.

2. 5 points of common use for the separation and processing of household, food and agricultural waste are organized. An explanation was given for rural residents on the organization of processing of these types of waste in the adjacent territories. As a result, agricultural waste was used in 35 farmsteads to form compost and vermicompost. Grown humus and earthworms help local residents to form productive vegetable gardens even on swampy and clay soils.

3. Teachers of SPARE schools from Moscow gave lectures and held demonstration classes on the following topics:" Agricultural waste – a resource and energy"," Life without waste"," Environmental habits " for rural families.

4. During the practice, urban schoolchildren developed homemade handwritten leaflets to increase the activity of self-employed rural residents and individual entrepreneurs.

5. Every day during the practice days, schoolchildren conducted raids on local forests and coastal territories of the ponds of the village of Menchakovo and small rivers of the Pervomaisky district. All the small rivers of the region are tributaries of the Volga River. Schoolchildren have identified more than 20 unauthorized landfills in the forests created by mini-businesses, tourists and even local residents. The garbage was partially disassembled and put into recycling by schoolchildren. But in difficult cases, students reported about unauthorized landfills to local municipalities.

The motto of the actions was the lines of a poem by Andrey Usachev:

"If you trash now, then pretty soon

We can grow Garbage mountains".

Such an active activity of children and adolescents attracted the attention of rural residents. Many families have started to apply environmental habits and a life without waste on a daily basis in their lives.