More than 200 hostels and 15 tourist offices are taking part in the new edition of the Recycling Way campaign.
One more summer, recycling and preservation of the environment, the tourism sector and the Way of St. James come together again around the Recycling Way campaign. The initiative born in 2016 continues to grow in its eagerness to raise awareness among people who travel the pilgrimage routes to Compostela of the need to separate and recycle waste and packaging they generate and keep clean the routes that guide their steps.
To achieve this, the tourism sector will again play a key role, since a total of 208 Galician hostels and 15 tourist information offices also located in different municipalities of this region will participate in the campaign by providing pilgrims with informative and practical materials (more than 21,000 reusable bags) to join the initiative, and making available blue and yellow bins so that they can deposit respectively, paper and cardboard, and cans, bricks and plastic containers.
The new edition of this campaign, launched by the Xunta de Galicia through the Regional Ministry of the Environment, Territory and Housing and the Galicia Tourism Agency, together with Ecoembes under the slogan “Let the Way leave its mark on you. Not you in it” is also growing in terms of its scope of action. To the French, English, Portuguese, Northern and Primitive ways is now added the Portuguese Way of the Coast.
Pilgrims who actively participate in this campaign will also have a Compostela of ecopilgrim with three stamps that can be obtained in the 208 hostels between June and October. For each person who shares a photo with the three stamps on Instagram, a native tree will be planted somewhere in Galicia.
During its first six years, the Recycling Way campaign has recovered more than 500 tonnes of waste. Last year, a record 117 tonnes were collected and its promoters hope that this year, 2022, this amount will be exceeded.