Country: MEXICO School / organization: INSTITUTO ESCUELA DEL SUR Delegation leader/ teacher: Abraham Pita Larrañaga Students: Sofía Arriaga Galicia, Hugo Tonatiuh Carrillo Bonilla, Santiago García Martínez. Partner organization: COMISIÓN AMBIENTAL DE LA MEGALÓPOLIS / PARTICIPACIÓN CIUDADANA Project title: TRANSPORTATION IN MEXICO CITY We will study the access and the use of public transport in Mexico City, mainly in the communities of the students who participate in this project. In Mexico City, the use of cars with petrol-powered internal combustion engine is privileged. The gasoline in Mexico is very expensive in economic terms and highly polluting. However, for reasons of comfort and a supposed "inefficiency" of public transport, many people never use it. The study aims to find out how efficient local public transport is compared to the use of cars, in terms of energy and travel time. We are making a lot of observations and measurements about times of travel, frequency, punctuality, accessibility and state of facilities. The research is being developed both in METRO (electrical subway) and in METROBUS (gasoline buses that circulate on their own lane), that are the main transportation systems in our city. Results will be disseminated and shared with local government and community groups interested in transport-related issues. On the other hand, it will also be reported that the public transport of Mexico City provides very interesting spaces of interaction and cultural exchange that are little valued.

Country: MEXICO School / organization: INSTITUTO ESCUELA DEL SUR Delegation leader/ teacher: Carmen Larrondo Sayavedra Students: Antonieta Aguirre Oviedo, Yuliana Gonzalez Dotor, Elián Sebastián López García, Masha Natalia López Lameda, Valentina Padilla Suárez. Partner organization: SECRETARÍA DE MEDIO AMBIENTE Y RECURSOS NATURALES Project title: CAMPAIGN TO AVOID THE USE OF EXPANDED POLYSTYRENE (EPS) Expanded polystyrene (EPS, star foam, or unicel in Mexico) is a type of plastic made of the pre expanded polystyrene, generally used for construction and food packaging. EPS is a highly contaminant product that doesn’t degrade in nature. It’s made from styrene. When EPS gets hot, it leaves very toxic dioxins, long exposure to it can affect the immune system, produces cancer and affects the hormonal system. While higher up is an animal in the food chain, more concentration of dioxins has in its system. Mexico produces 125,000 tons per year, from which it is estimated that only 1% is being recycled. In different parts of the world, including Mexico, multiple campaigns suggesting the reduction or the searching to avoid the total consumption of EPS in our lives have been released. However, Mexico City is not within these places and that is why we have decided to start a program where the main objective is raising awareness within our classmates and families, later on expanding to more people in our neighborhood, including merchants, restaurants and schools to reduce the consumption and to explain the high risk and affectations generated because of this product. We decided to start at our school, chatting in each group and conducting a survey after the talk to know how aware they were about the issue and conducting a second survey to observe the changes we achieved. Later, we will approach "sister" schools and the rest of the local community.

Country: MEXICO School / organization: INSTITUTO ESCUELA DEL SUR Delegation leader/ teacher: Huitzilihuitl Moctezuma Mendoza Students: Andrea Cisneros Guadarrama, Mariana Pérez Buendía, Derek Portugal Vela Morales, Christian Vargas Tena Partner organization: ISLA URBANA Project title: RAINWATER RECOLLECTION AT SCHOOL Currently, the water system in Mexico City is both deficient and unsustainable. It is 70% formed by the aquifer mantle and 29% by the Lerma-Cutzamala system, then 1% by springs. The system requires great energy and economic investment due to the complicated route that water follows to reach the city: it has to ascend more 1000 m, great losses of the liquid are due to leaky pipes, besides unequal access in areas that do not have piped water or only once every so often. Floods and subsidence derived from a surplus water and over-exploitation of the aquifer, add up to the problem of distribution. It is necessary to rethink the water system of Mexico City keeping sustainability as principle, to reduce energy consumption and support local water projects, such as water catchment systems are implemented. Rainwater collection systems allow to reduce the excess of water in the hydrous network; improving its access, taking advantage of the rain that ended before in the drainage, solving the floods and subsidence. For this reason, the Rainwater Collection Project of the Instituto Escuela will be implemented to be an example for water sustainability both in schools and in the city, so it can be emulated elsewhere.

Country: MEXICO School / organization: INSTITUTO ESCUELA DEL SUR Delegation leader/ teacher: Magalí Sarmiento Fradera Students: Denisse Guevara Espinosa, Nareni Pineda Juárez, Martina Sánchez Caballero, Patricio Sánchez Caballero. Partner organization: GO! GLOBAL – VIRTUAL SCHOOL EXCHANGE Project title: GREEN WALLS: A CONTRIBUTION TO A BETTER ENVIRONMENT IN MEXICO CITY. Mexico City, the country’s capital city, is the economic, political and cultural center of Mexico. It is situated in the Mexican plateau, which is a valley surrounded by mountains and volcanoes. 17% of the total population of the country lives there: 20,843,000 inhabitants with a population density of 13,500 inhabitants per km2. Each day people commute using 4.7 million of automotive vehicles that use fossil type fuels, consequently creating high pollution levels. Besides, the increasing population and urban infrastructure has caused a reduction of green spaces: currently 3 m2 per person while the WHO (World Health Organization) recommends 9 to 12 m2 per inhabitant. We are aware that our city is far from being sustainable, but we also know that we can make some contributions that, as a whole, would improve life quality for the ones who live in this city. Considering that the available spaces for planting trees is limited, our focus is on the implementation of green spaces. We have given priority to green walls, which in the last few years have proliferated in our city. We are contributing to this movement by creating them in our own school.

Country: MEXICO School / organization: INSTITUTO ESCUELA DEL SUR Delegation leader/ teacher: Elda Gabriela Pérez Aguirre and José Antonio López Tercero Caamaño Students: Jocelyn Ghisleine Contreras Hernández, Marcela Abigail Ugarte Cedillo. Partner organization: CENTRO DE COMPLEJIDAD (UNAM) / SECRETARÍA DEL MEDIO AMBIENTE Y RECURSOS NATURALES DE LA CDMX Project title: ENTOMOLOGY: SOURCE OF TRADITIONAL, WHOLESOME, NUTRITIOUS AND TASTY FOOD Population growth has increased the demand for food on a global scale. Recent research indicates that the consumption of some insects represents one of the best sources of proteins and its production requires less than a quarter of food than for cattle, for example. Insects can become one of the possible ways to deal with the shortage of food in different regions and malnutrition in others. In fact, in May 2013, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said that eating insects could fight hunger in the world. This project takes up the ancestral tradition of entomophagy or insect ingestion in our country. Mexico is a privileged country in this sense, since, of the edible species of insects in the world, a high percentage is endogenous. We are making a study of the main species, of the regions in which they are produced and consumed, of the nutritional potential they have and how widespread is their import from other Mexican states, their production and consumption in Mexico City. The production of edible insects can become a multidisciplinary and sustainable activity in Mexico City. With the conclusions of our study we will present an information document so that people of our community know the advantages of this nutritional source, that in many occasions is rejected.