Readers

Guillermo Contreras is member of Ecologist in Action, an organization in a national scale. They have 300 groups in Spain and they developed different areas such as sustainable development, urban projects and animal abuse, although he specially works on sustainable development and climate change. For example, in Córdoba the organization was fighting against the cement factory “Cosmos” in order to put a filter to obtain a cleaner air in the zone that surround the company. The effects of this type of pollution are affected in considerably to human health and cause physical damage to homes, vehicles and facilities.

In addition, pupils asked Guillermo for the problems of Córdoba. He gave us some advices to improve the air of the city. He recommended us to use the bicycle and the public transport. It is important to mention that the electric cars are not an alternative because the origin of this kind of energies is a 70% produced by derivatives of the petrol. Four major issues were addressed below: local trade as a tool to reduce pollution.

In this way, Guillermo said that several studies have shown that when you buy from an independent, locally-owned business, rather than a nationally-owned businesses, significantly more of your money is used to make purchases from other local businesses, service providers and farms - continuing to strengthen the economic base of the community and reducing environmental impact.;

Next, we talked about the present and the future of green areas in Cordoba with Guillermo highlighting the importance of developing an ecological gardening, To get it, said Guillermo, “we should use native trees and reduce water consumption. In addition, we think that to ensure a sustainable future for our green zones we need to create, develop and implement a social orchards network of ecological products”; Our energy model and its alternatives was the third key topic to discuss. Guillermo said that all around

Europe, Smart Cities take seriously the pollution eduction with programmes which ensure quality standards of clean air. A lot of work still has to be done in this area. For long, politicians and population have desired a clean atmosphere by strengthen some measures related to our energy model. Electricity supply must be based on renewable energies, motivating the installation of those to production and self-consumption. To do this, we must modify the current legislation to provide users with the means to achieve self-consumption. Finally, a modern concept, t h e circular economy applied to waste management, especifically related to Sadeco, which have explained to EU institutions their plan for reusing and recycling the waste. In this sense, the concept of circular economy explains the second use of any object even when its function is completely different. Has your heating broken down? Don´t worry, Sadeco is going to put in march a Repair School in order to encourage a new life for our household appliances. An excellent initiative.

To close the event, we were talking about the illegal urbanization in the mountains of Córdoba too. People are doing illegal individual houses where a few years ago these lands had been used to farming. He answered that is true, although Córdoba is creating a “Green Belt” in order to purify the air of the capital and get the other one, cleaner of course, of the countryside.