Mrs. Maria, a woman born and raised in Nuquí, Chocó, Colombia, is a beautiful human being. Her contribution to her community has been incredibly outstanding. She recycles all plastic bottles and aluminum cans throughout the community of Nuquí and has been doing it for the past five years.

However, Mrs. Maria is currently living in a pretty precarious and dangerous place.  The house she lives in is in a risk zone, exposed to ground instability and prone to floods. This house has holes in the roof and doesn't have proper water and sanitary systems either.  In addition, the house itself is very small and Mrs. Maria shares it with all the bottles and cans she collects, thus not leaving much space for her own. 

We know for a fact that the work Mrs. Maria does for her community, she does it out of the goodness of her heart and not for any compensation, even though she does get a small remuneration from the recycling team. Therefore, R&E Ocean Community Conservation together with the Mingamar Collective and the Nuqui's Recycling Team wants to recompense her selfless act by acquiring a new lot and new house, her own house, where she can live safely and securely and take care of her health.  We would also like to set up a small recycling station outside of the home but within the same lot, so she can prepare, organized, and stored all the bottles and cans she collects.

Here is a description of the daily routine in Mrs. Maria’s life.

Every morning she wakes up at the first sight of light, gets ready and moves around the town of Nuqui with her wheelbarrow, picking and collecting plastic bottles and cans from already informed locations (restaurants, stores, shops etc.) or from the streets and the beach. 

After this gathering, she brings what was collected to her house to start the process of separation and cleaning. The tags or marked wraps get removed from the bottles and then washed, while cans only get washed. After she has a fair amount of recycling bags filled and well packed with bottles or cans, the recycling team of Nuqui picks them up to be processed in the recycling station. The material then gets compressed by packs and shipped to another location by boat.

She repeats this routine everyday, weather conditions allowing it. Her community is aware of her work and respects what she does and her well being. We all want what’s best for her and would like to invite you to be part of this cause so that she can continue to be a beacon of environmental activism and community support.