Environmental research

The project s overall aim is to promote long-term waste recycling attitudes in the community of Roche Bois by targeting first a pollution problem that occurs daily in the neighbourhood and which is very visible: the littering of used plastic products everywhere. This is common knowledge nationwide: the region of Roche Bois has one of the worst, if not actually the worst, reputation across the whole island as being a deprived zone, stigmatised due to poverty, ethnicity, low level of education, vulnerable to social problems, high level of unemployment. Non-Roche Bois residents nearly unanimously consider the place as being highly dangerous and completely unattractive. Roche Bois reputation therefore has to be completely turned upside down in order to make outside people become interested in visiting Roche Bois. The project wants to alleviate the persisting environmental problems which unfortunately add to the precarious image of Roche-Bois. In this way, the project is geared towards raising their consciousness towards a proper use of wastes within the household and to develop an environment friendly attitude towards their neighbourhood. The project aims at placing selective litterbins at strategic positions in the different zones of Roche-Bois so that the inhabitants can dump their wastes in such a manner that these can be used for recycling purposes afterwards. The litterbins will therefore comprise various compartments in order to encourage the sorting of litter. The organic wastes designed for composting will be used for such after relevant training and provision of composting units through the assistance of the Young Farmers Association. The actual list of domestic waste types that will be targeted is being finalised, based on practical considerations of how much litter sorting can be expected from residents at first. OBJECTIVES 1. Raise environmental awareness in Roche Bois by encouraging residents to properly dispose of their domestic litter and participate in wastes recycling. This will be a concrete answer to the number one pollution problem identified by the residents themselves, i.e. inhabitants are the main polluters of their own environment by carelessly throwing around their litter in the neighbourhood. 2. Set up income-generating wastes collection and recycling micro-projects which will directly target poor Roche Bois families, as well as raise funds for the community. 3. To improve the image (social and environment) of Roche-Bois and raise consciousness of inhabitants towards drugs problems and social ills in the region.To create conditions for the target group to initiate political dialogue with the local authorities and central government on issues related to environment awareness. 5. To change the mind set of the stakeholders in Roche-Bois in order to initiate actions within their immediate surrounding. 6. To encourage inhabitants of Roche Bois to undertake household composting in their backyard. This will in turn, encourage them to undertake gardening activities in vegetables, flowers and fruits cultivation in their leisure time. Such action will contribute to their immediate living environment.

Mauritius