Nestled between mountains, Sarajevo is rich in nature. As in many cities around the globe, plastic is a ubiquitous part of consumer life in Sarajevo. Single-use plastic bottles assemble at kiosks, ready for those passing by to conveniently grab a drink in during the heat waves of the summer. Items placed in plastic bags, ready to conveniently transported to their next destination.
In the summer of 2018, Precious Plastic Sarajevo began to materialize. During that summer, a shredder powered by bicycle, a compression machine, and injection machine were created. The materials for the DIY machines were sourced from hardwood stores and scrapyards, as the team worked with a local mechanic to weld and create the machines.
In October 2018, with the support of Crvena Association for Art and Culture, Precious Plastic Sarajevo gave a workshop as part of Prostor Povezivanja (Connectivity Space) at the campus for the University of Sarajevo Faculty of Agriculture and Food Science. The Faculty took on Precious Plastic with a team of six students and faculty. At the beginning of this year, the team began by renovating a space in the Faculty for plastic collection and have garnered enthusiasm from various members in the faculty. In the following months, the machines were experimented with and tweaked. One change included adding a motor to the shredder, in place of the bike. The group has recently received a small grant in order to continue working on and improving their DIY machines.
The group began experimenting with the injection machine and created various items such as bowls, but with the donation of two molds from Saračević d.o.o. the team was able to begin producing cleaner products more efficiently. On one particularly productive day at the workshop, the team produced 22 pots and 42 hexagonal tiles.
Following an Earth Day presentation in April, the team was able to recruit 15 new members with a variety of interests and skills in order to help them expand production and the impact that they are having. The team hopes to increase plastic recycling awareness in the city this year.
Other partners in the city have also begun to look at recycled plastic as a material. At the Academy of Fine Arts in Sarajevo, students have been thinking of ways to revitalize a green space using recycled plastic to create spaces of interaction in the park, such as benches or playground equipment.
From the beginning, Precious Plastic Sarajevo has collaborated with New York University Abu Dhabi. Professor Zlatan Filipovic (American University of Sharjah) and Assistant Teacher Denisa Šečerbajtarević (Academy of Fine Arts Sarajevo) attended the WANA conference in December 2018, participating in panels and assisting in workshops. A cube, the product of an experiment, was also featured in the Plastic Fantastic exhibition that opened during the WANA conference. Through the support of Crvena Association for Art and Culture, Precious Plastic Sarajevo has hosted two NYUAD interns. Hamza Haider worked on the project in the summers of 2018 and 2019 and Katharina Klaunig worked on the project in the summer of 2019.
As knowledge sharing partners and collaborators, Precious Plastic Sarajevo and Precious Plastic NYUAD continue to work together.
With more than 7,000 thousand islands to choose from, one would expect it to be hard to find the best places to visit in the Philippines. Yet, when it comes to recommendations, El Nido tops all the lists on the internet as the ‘best’ and ‘most beautiful’, and is one of those rare occasions, the hype and fame are all well-deserved in the case for this little corner of paradise.
Its most popular tourist activities, the island hopping tours around the smaller islands surrounding El Nido begin with each visitor paying a small fee for a life-long environment tax to (literally) pay their respect for mother nature – as long as they save the paper of the tax being paid, which you are reminded of every time by all tour guides and tourist offices). “Sustainability and environment mindedness is a conscious action by all in El Nido,” says every captain at the beginning of the day tours around the islands. Every tour includes a quick training on environmental consciousness. No littering on the islands is allowed, and if anyone spots any trash, they are reminded to kindly pick them up and give them to the boat staff so that every new visitor of the islands will feel like they are the first ones to ever set foot on the place.
Plastic straws? Almost non-existent. It’s harder to find a bar or street vendor with plastic straws then it is to avoid one here. Sea vendors who approach the boat tour participants during island hopping only have bamboo straws and the few private beaches that have shopping huts for refreshments either use the same bamboo straws or cut the bucos (coconuts) in a shape so that you can enjoy it straight from the shell without spillage or littering (excluding the shells themselves… but they are part of nature so the only thing they might destroy is the aesthetics of a clean beach). Or if not bamboo straws, most restaurants use metal straws to serve their refreshments in the towns.
With their effort and hard work, the people of El Nido are a great example of how to develop sustainable tourism to appreciate and show off the best side of mother nature. There’s still room for improvement as the place will develop, but they are taking the right steps towards a better and more sustainable way of tourism.
