Climate Detectives Projects 2018-2019

Project title: Nós e o Ambiente

Team: Detetives do Clima

2018-2019   Colégio de Santa Clara   Angra do Heroísmo   Portugal   18 Student’s age: 8-9

Our project focused on 2 problems, collect solid waste from 2 arteries of our city and count vehicles in Rua Direita, in Angra do Heroísmo. Every fortnight we would go to the two arteries in question and carry out the counts of vehicles and persons circulating in them, as well as taking the solid waste that we found in said arteries. These two issues were about the garbage exposed on the streets and the pollution that cars send to our Environment.

At the level of solid waste we found that our arteries were extremely clean (the residues found were scarce and the ones that we found were in the middle of the stones of the sidewalk, being difficult to remove), being highly praised by tourists (we have written reports), at the level of the vehicles we have noticed that vehicles, as a rule, only run with one passenger, with scarce vehicles circulating with the maximum capacity. If in the case of the waste the results were very positive, in the case of the vehicles, because the circulation of most cars with only one person is extremely negative.

In actions to alleviate the problems found, in our awareness actions we distributed flyers, we used green t-shirts (Environment color) with signs of negative actions prohibited by the students, we showed posters and signs of STOP (painted by students In our latest awareness-raising campaign, we moved into electric cars, hybrids and Plug In (a local booth was available to give us cars for this awareness campaign) to raise awareness the use of this type of vehicles because they are more environmentally friendly, and finally we have created, within our class, a system of rotating hitchhikes for extracurricular activities, so instead of going 4 cars to the same place, one with the maximum capacity. Finally, on May 22, 2019, we presented our project in the City Hall of Angra do Heroísmo, before a crowded room.