I have been recycling for about three decades now.

Started in the '80s, back in my home country, where I was thrust in the role of organizing the recycling effort for about 200 families in my neighborhood at the start of the first national recycling campaign. It involved talking to a lot of people, handing them plastic bags of different colors and convincing them to separate their trash into paper, plastic/glass and, well, trash. The idea was good, but lacked municipal support (containers and transportation for the recyclables) and faded away after a few months.

In the '90s, when I lived in North Baltimore, I used to drive twice a month to the closest recycling center with bags, full with paper, plastic and glass. The recycling centers at the time were improvised weekend affairs on a companys parking lot, and there were only a few of them.

The last 15 years, living in NW Washington, DC, I have continued to recycle, and probably do a better job now as there are recycling bins on every floor of our building, right next to the trash chutes.

Moral of my story: recycling works better when it is organized well and easier to do. But isnt that also true of many other things? Why have I been doing it? It is not so much about "doing the right thing", I have to admit, it is more about the reluctance to throw away limited resources that can be re/used again in a variety of ways.

Recycling, for me, is part of a generally green lifestyle (a separate, much larger topic I will not indulge in in this limited space) as well as particular fondness for a green sport and recreation activity, as the attached photo reveals.

Yes, we can do our bit, make a difference, each of us in our own way, but we can do much more together with the right institutional support, with the right international frameworks in place well, I am preaching to the choir, I know, so will stop here. Keep recycling, my friends!

Gerardo saving the environment, one recycled bottle at a time

For me, working for Connect4Climate is not just about coming into the office every day at 9am and get out at 6pm. This is not that kind of job that once you are at home you feel “disconnected” from what you did all day: working for the environment means that I embrace the belief that every gesture can make the difference in mitigating my footprint on the planet.

How can I sensitize people if I’m the first to act in the wrong way?

Mahatma Gandhi said, “be the change you want to see in the world.” What a perfect statement to synthesize my vision of the role that every citizen has to defend our mother earth!
More than fifteen years ago, I started to reduce my footprint recycling my household waste, but let me tell you something:  this habit wasn’t an “innate” part of my behavior, it wasn’t part of my “childhood manners” that my parents taught me.

I was born in a small coastal town in the South of Italy called Salerno, which is actually one of the top Italian recycling cities.

Fifteen years ago it wasn’t so, my region suffered from huge waste management problems. This led my region to several collapses of the entire waste system (do you remember Naples invaded by trash?). I imagine “yes”.

People didn’t have the tools or the knowledge to “enter” into the recycling habit until Salerno’s city council financed a massive infrastructure plan to open new recycling centers and empower people through some capillary communication and awareness programs.

After that even my Grandma (90 years old) shouted at me “this bottle goes to the plastic bin and this goes to compost bin, idiot!”

 Those radical changes that I experienced prove that if you give to the people the right tools, they’ll understand “WHY” they need to change behavior.

After all these years, even if I’m living in another continent, for me it is impossible not to recycle my trash!

It became an automatism, a good one.

I have no doubt that informing and empowering people to action in their everyday life is the key to protect our children’s future.

We do not need to wait for another law to pass or for another high profile ONU meeting, the planet needs your every day actions!

I invite you to start today.

Connect4Climate with The Guardian hosted a Live Q&A Session on May 1 to discuss waste management issues. Questions addressed included: Could a potential waste management crisis actually be an opportunity to innovate in disguise? How can different actors work in partnership to find low-cost, environmentally friendly solutions? And in what type of waste management technologies and program is funding most effectively placed?

The live chat is being fed into the Cittadinanza in Festa 2014 discussions on sustainability and waste, 2-4 May 2014. The event is supported by Connect4Climate and Earthday Italia and will also celebrate Rokia Traoré as a Connect4Climate Global Leader for her commitment and dedication to supporting climate change initiatives around the world.