Recicletas
The "Recicletas" are part of the technology and innovation component of the Wanda Díaz project.
On March 15, 2023, we inaugurated the "Recicletas" project together with the Don Bosco Communal Board and the National Recycling Company of Panama. The Recicletas are modified bicycles with collection trailers that will gather recyclable materials door-to-door in the households of the Don Bosco District.
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The design of the "Recicletas" aims to generate models of collection and home collection that encourage proper sorting, collection, and recycling of waste so that these behaviors can later become habits in the population. It is an initiative designed to transfer knowledge, provide equipment, and facilitate the connection between actors and strategic allies to offer doorstep collection to the households in the District.
For the construction of the Recicletas, mountain bikes were purchased and modified with wagons built with locally salvaged materials. The structures were fabricated from steel tubes from old discarded shelving; second-use wheels, axles, and bearings were purchased from motorcycle workshops; the articulation are arrowheads salvaged from an auto mechanic shop in Las Acacias; The jumbo bags or "bigbags" were donated by the CALESA company in Aguadulce and the labor was carried out by rehabilitated blacksmiths, welders and painters and in search of resocialization for addiction in the REMAR Association through its workshops in Chilibre.
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Given the problems of poor collection, the option is to burn or dump the waste in unauthorized places, creating serious health and environmental problems. The project seeks to take advantage of recyclable materials, promote their correct disposal and prevent health problems caused by the lack of waste disposal options. Similarly, collectors will have access to sidewalks where trucks cannot enter, speeding up and increasing service coverage. The collected waste will be transported to the collection facility to be reclassified, weighed and compacted.
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The "Recicletas" project will be a sample of a solution for the management of household and commercial waste within a local government to facilitate a recyclable solid waste collection system generated by the inhabitants of the communities of Terremar and Bello Horizonte within the corregimiento of Don Bosco. The idea is that the project can be expanded to other communities and replicated anywhere in the country since it does not emit greenhouse gases and has a very low carbon footprint.
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The "Recicletas" are an example of how, with limited resources, ingenuity and creativity, solutions can be generated to problems such as the lack of collection systems for recycling valuable materials, reducing the volume of garbage generated and avoiding river pollution, streams and oceans.