Rio+20
Bangu has the Worst Air Quality in Rio de Janeiro
Feb 5th
According to MonitorAr-Rio’s data, of nine such stations in the network, the West Zone neighborhood of Bangu’s air quality monitoring station showed the worst performance in the second half of 2012. On December 25th, the worst day in that period, the air quality in Bangu was 213 points – which classifies it as “bad” on a scale of five possible classifications: good, regular, inadequate, bad, and awful. In the port area on that same day, the measure was 47 points, a “good” classification.
MonitorAr-Rio is a program developed by the Municipal Environment Office (SMAC) that registers the levels of pollutants and atmospheric More >
Sustainable Glass
Jan 28th
Climbing one of the many slopes of Morro da Pedreira in Costa Barros in Rio de Janeiro’s North Zone, you might not guess you’d find a father up here with a great talent for folk art and a passion for recycling and the environment. The material this man has chosen for his beautiful work is glass.
Often carelessly thrown away, glass becomes one of the villains in this season’s all-too-common flooding. Glass takes hundreds of years to biodegrade, which is why it is commonly recycled, or at least should be.
The artist Alex Sandro, or “Cabeludo” as he’s known in the community More >
Discover Favela Design!
Dec 19th
The exhibition O Design da Favela (Favela Design) at the Centro Carioca de Design (Carioca Design Center) is currently showing 125 pieces by artists, artisans and inventors from 15 communities in Rio de Janeiro, with a few pieces of unknown origin. In this project, the favela is not associated with misery or scarcity, but is a place of abundance: abundant imagination, invention, study and practice.
Creativity
Irmã Fátima and the children of Tabajaras have learned to see disposable materials in different ways. Together they transform plastic bottles into toys. “This one looks like a fish,” says one of her students. “It’s magnificent the way children look More >
The Story of Dona Rita
Sep 24th
For 12 years, Dona Rita Maria Barbosa, 56, kept an organic garden supplying her local community in Colônia Juliano Moreira (in Jacarepaguá, West Zone) with fresh fruit and vegetables and teaching schoolchildren about agroecology. Last month she was evicted from her home and the garden destroyed to make way for a garbage collection point. Over coffee in her new house, where the walls are unstable and there is no garden space for her to plant, she tells her story:
How long have you lived in Colônia?
I’ve lived in Colônia since November 1st, 1990. I came from a hill in Praça Seca More >
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Light demolishes Verdejar’s headquarters
Aug 9th
On Monday morning, representatives from Rio’s electricity supplier, Light, arrived unannounced at the headquarters of socio-environmental NGO Verdejar with a judicial notice for immediate eviction to clear the land for a new substation. Members of the 15-year-old non-profit were taken completely by surprise and could only watch as Light, who arrived accompanied by military police, a moving truck and several workers with sledgehammers, demolished their headquarters.
Located at the foot of the Serra da Misericórdia, the largest patch of Atlantic Rainforest in Rio’s North Zone, Verdejar have worked to protect the area from illegal occupation in the past, managed to reforest significant More >
