Consorci per al tractament de residus sòlids urbans del Maresme

TWINKLE: THE NEW IMAGE FOR THE RECYCLING CAMPAIGN IN THE MARESME REGION

The initiative has come from the Consortium for Municipal Solid Waste Treatment of Maresme
This week a new recycling campaign has been launched which consists of the distribution of 16,000 comic strips and 7,500 copies of a story starring the new Consortium mascot, Twinkle the firefly. The mascot has been created from two logos: That of the Consortium and the logo of its environmental education programme “A walk in the waste.”
It’s an intimate, funny, magical image, and one which is aimed at resonating with the largest group of visitors to the Centre: pupils from schools who are in either their last years of primary school or are at secondary school. At the same time, it also focuses on helping adults understand the whole process of recycling.
The author of both the story and the comic strip is the photographer and illustrator, Marga Cruz, from Mataro, who has collaborated with the graphic artist Arnau González, the writer Montserrat Assens, and the designer Alex Valls.
Fireflies or glow worms are insects from the coleopteran family. The light that they emit comes from chemical substances which they have in their abdomen, which, when acting together, produce light. This is the principal idea which relates to one of the activities carried out at the Centro Integral de Valorización de Residuos del Maresme, which is managed by the Consortium for Municipal Solid Waste Treatment of Maresme.
On the visits which takes place at the Centre, the different ways of recuperating material and energy are shown, and how from waste we can obtain useful new products and generate electricity. So, Twinkle is the perfect character to guide us on this journey.

The comic strip
The first thing that was created is the comic strip, which is made up of 20 illustrations with their corresponding verses, where the arrival of this character at the Centre is explained in rhyming couplets. Apart from being attractive and colourful, it is an educational tool which, on the one hand, explains the different processes that the waste which arrives at the Plant goes through, and secondly reminds us in an original way of good environmental practices when it comes to waste separation at home.

The story
From this comic strip, Marga Cruz has created a story, 52 pages long, where through an narrative full of imagination, the arrival of Twinkle at the Consortium on a windy day is explained. Her arrival allows us to discover the journey that the waste takes after it is unloaded from the lorry, by means of a familiar and educational text which includes other surprising characters. The story is told in Catalan, Spanish and English, and closes with a popular Catalan song on the theme of fireflies.

The mascot
This will be the character which, from now on, will be accompanying us in all the activities in the Consortium environmental education programme.