Cartoniadi is a “recovery race”, a serious and funny competition that aims to alert citizen on the waste sorting of precious materials such as paper and cardboards. This initiative was born and promoted by Comieco, the National Consortium for the Recovery and Recycling of Cellulose-based Packaging. The Consortium manages voluntarily every stage of the process that recovers and recycles paper and board collected as a whole and not only packaging waste. In order to manage the collection and the recycling, Comieco signs agreements with the local authorities and collectors. Seven years ago Comeico invented a sort of Olympic games of recycling to let different municipalities and districts compete to collect paper and alert citizens on environmental issues, giving, at the same time, the possibility to intervein with concrete actions. The prize the winner gets is a sum of money.
In Turin Cartoniadi hadn’t occurred yet (whereas in Milan, Rome and other Italian areas it had). The initiative started through Eco dalle Città that put together Comieco and Amiat, the multiservice company that in Turin is in charge of waste collection: “We promoted Cartoniadi in the schools and in the city districts”, says Paolo Hutter, director of the on-line publication. “The real turning point consisted in a prize dedicated exclusively to elementary and junior high schools around Turin We calculate how much more paper and cardboard have been collected and then the prize is given to the district that have had the highest percentage increase. The money goes only to the schools, no matter how much they have helped the collection”. In this way the ecological advantage of recycling and the educative action of teaching these important issues go hand in hand. “At the beginning the competition was concentrated in November but then we chose to keep the attention alive also in the three following months, giving out minor prizes”, Hutter explains. In Turin paper recycling is part of the Cartesio project and special dustbins have been placed in the houses’ courtyards. Unfortunately the presence of dustbins in the streets as well allows many people to throw the garbage in there, wasting materials that could be recycled. “We must work harder and banish indolence. Cartoniadi involves children’s help and that’s why it represents a hope for the future”, Paolo Hutter concludes.