Reducing Pollution Partnership

The UEM Botanical Gardens collaborated with three institutions; Clube de Educação Ambiental da Faculdade de Educação, Repensar- Cooperativa de Educação Ambiental, and Mentes Sustentaveis to host a workshop about solid waste management and recycling. Students from UEM environmentally focused courses and faculty members from different departments attended. A mural was commissioned to depict nature and its benefits to people, such as mental wellbeing, and promoting best practices to reduce pollution and biodiversity loss. Secondary school students attended a workshop to learn about pollution and the impacts on the environment, the importance of biodiversity, and to plant indigenous trees. Following the workshop, Geração Consciente provided separate waste bins at the UEM Botanical Gardens and the UEM School of Biological Sciences.

The NGO Geração Consciente held workshops with schoolchildren about recycling and reusing materials and planted fruit trees in schools and vulnerable communities. This marked the beginning of a community-led fruit tree management project. Fruit trees were chosen as research shows people are more likely to water and manage fruit trees than other trees. The trees will increase carbon storage through carbon capture, increase soil stability, and improve air quality.

Saskia Mori Environmental Pollution Advisor saskia.mori@jncc.gov.uk