Marian, Alejandro y Arturo Ángel. México. 18, 16 and 16 years old.

In our community there is a great deal of misinformation and apathy regarding ecology and sustainability. To put it in perspective, every day in our state 8,500 tons of waste are collected, both from housing and from businesses and industries [1]. Despite being one of the states that generates the most waste, in the latest official figures from INEGI [2], we do not profile as one of the entities with the most collection centers and we only recover 12% of the material that is generated [3].

The Sustainability Observatory in Nuevo León not only points out the generation and management of waste as one of the particular problems of our region, but also the loss of vegetation cover, soil conservation, contamination and deterioration of water resources [4] . Regarding the latter, it should be noted that we are currently going through a period of water shortages, and in recent weeks we have had supply cuts as a consequence.

With all of the above, we noticed that our friends and colleagues did not know the seriousness of the problem and, above all, the actions we had implemented were not enough. This was what motivated us to carry out a campaign for our educational community with the theme of the 5 R’s: reject, reduce, recycle and return, since they promote the actions that we must follow if we want to reduce the problem we are in. For the campaign, we invited different local “eco friendly” or “zero waste” businesses, thrift shops, sustainable food suppliers, vermicompost and fertilizer vendors, and representatives of Agua y Drainaje de Monterrey, the agency in charge of water supply in our city.

Fellow students were part of this movement wearing green, participating in games and dynamics, as well as collecting material to recycle such as cardboard, plastic and electronics. We also germinated flower and vegetable plants to give away, others brought their own plants to exchange, as well as books and clothes. In order to inform and raise awareness, short talks, workshops and videos were given. Our wish is that this campaign has opened the panorama of our classmates and teachers and that it serves as a precedent to continue carrying out these actions in our daily lives.