October 2003 Environmental Education Program Mauricio Bautista and Nadia Mora have started a new season for the program in the local schools. The educational program begins with a PowerPoint presentation that CEA staff member Emilio Talancón created. The presentation will prepare the studens for the recycling process to be used in the program.

Each classroom will be provided two boxes; one box is yellow and the other box is gray. The yellow containers are for glass and aluminum cans and the gray containers are for plastic items. The same containers are located in the Pueblo and at Playa Akumal.

ECOCE, in a cooperative effort with Coke, Pepsi, Cristal and three other companies, provides large bags as containersfor PET plastic drink bottles in order to collect all the plastic containers. Once collected they are shipped to China for reconstitution into other products. The children will be encouraged to use the system and teach it to others such as their parents.

As an added incentive and educational tool, all the students will be taken to Hidden Worlds to explore the underground river systems and understand how the water filtrates through the earth in our limestone terrain.

In addition, Kate Robinhawk and Emilio Talancón went to Servicios Urbanos and spoke with the director of SAUSA, the garbage collection company in the Municipality. They proposed a system of identification of recyclables for the pepenadores(people who live and work in the dump in the dump. SAUSA liked the idea, but there are no pependadores collecting in the dump so the idea has been tabled for now.