Emater trains artisans from Cotijuba Island for cardboard recycling
Initiative in the Metropolitan Region of Belém has four modules and has already benefited communities from Mosqueiro Island and Salinópolis
In the year of the 30th United Nations Conference on Climate Change (COP 30), to be held in November in Belém, entrepreneur Ana Carolina Silva, 27, from Cotijuba Island in Belém, has been innovating in business with sustainability.
Since February, through ongoing training promoted by the local office of the Technical Assistance and Rural Extension Company of the State of Pará (Emater) in the capital, Ana Carolina, who is a farmer, artisan, and owner of a small shoe and clothing store, recycles cardboard to create stylish packaging and gifts such as baskets and jewelry boxes.
The farmer and artisan is part of a group of 13 women from the Poção Community: Arts and Flavors of the Women of Poção (Asmup), an organization directly assisted by Emater, focusing on handicrafts and the production of typical foods.
From rural and peri-urban areas, the agro-extractive women diversify income and tradition. In the case of cardboard recycling, the product is collected from local businesses, reducing what would become waste.
“I, for example, have my little store [R&A Store] in the center of Cotijuba, and I am a beekeeper: I raise uruçu-amarela and marmelada-amarela bees,” says Ana.
The support from Emater, in the words of the beneficiary, “opens infinite windows”: “Everything has been going well. We learn to give utility to what we used to throw away. With the course, we found a way to commercialize, creating packaging for gifts, snack packaging, chocolate, truffles, we put inside the little boxes, things that we sell ourselves, handicrafts. Many ideas came, and we are putting them into practice. Just gratitude,” she reports.
Training
For the social technician at the Emater office in Belém, Teodora Golonhesky, a member of the team responsible for the training, the initiative is primarily ecological. “The impact on the environment is immediate because it educates in an environmental sense and provides a useful destination for what would become mere polluting waste.”
“Sustainable consumption is a very valid guideline for family farming and a theme always present in Emater's actions. It is also worth noting that generating income for women strengthens gender issues, and the collective activity brings people together in terms of associativism, cooperativism, and solidarity economy,” explains Teodora Golonhesky.
The standard cardboard recycling course offered by Emater in the Metropolitan Region of Belém (RMB) and municipalities has four modules and has already benefited communities from the Mosqueiro District and Salinópolis.
Text by Aline Miranda
