Ecological Sidewalk Andapé

An ecological sidewalk with scrap tire and sisal to substitute the amount of cement, which decreases some of the urban problems, such as floods, heat islands and lack of accessibility.

Our project is the elaboration of an ecological sidewalk so we can reduce some environmental impacts related to cities. By that, we replace the large amount of cement on the sidewalks with a portion of recyclables (sisal and tire strips) in order to increase the porosity of the sidewalks and to reduce the impacts related to cement.

For production, we have four stages:

1. Basement: We will use a gravel tire base, which gives an uneven texture that will be corrected in step 4;
2. Mix: After measuring the proportions, the materials are placed are mixed in a bucket. Then we add 6 L/m² of water to check the moldable character of the dough;
3. Molding: For molding, we use a rectangular frame to check the shape of the sidewalk, in addition to being where it dries for the planning phase;
4. Flatten: At this stage, either the purification powder is placed and flattened on, or diamond sandpaper is used, in order to make the paver flatter so that it can dry.

All of this can be done manually, but a concrete mixer makes our production easier.

Sidewalks are an essential part of urban cities mobility – or at least it should be. In the report of the Brazilian Statistics Institute, there are 4 citizens for each car in Brazil, a result that expresses the lack of encouragement to walk on the streets. In other words, current pavements are commonly forgotten factors of high rates of flood, heat and lack of accessibility in cities, issues promoted by the raw materials of these infrastructures.

Nowadays, paths are mainly made by an impermeable heat conductor material: cement. This results in critical environmental problems related to floods – as demonstrated by recent cases related to global warming in Germany and Belgium, for example – and several climate change events such as urban heat islands. Worse, cement production is responsible for 8% of carbon dioxide emissions worldwide, according to the British Chatham House Institute.

Additionally, combined with these disasters, the urban pavements are dangerous for various groups and minorities, including people with disabilities, children, elders and pregnants. As stated by Mobilize Brazil, an organization focused on evaluating Brazilian sidewalks, the average on the security of these structures reached just 6 points out of 10, when the least acceptable for social well-being is 8. 

This illustrates the necessity of replacing the materials used for paths’ construction with more sustainable and resistant ones in order to approach the SDG 11 – Sustainable cities and communities – in an elementary way.

According to United Nations Fund for Population Activities’ report, women are mostly affected by climate changes. Not only the most affected group, but also the one who can transform this scenario effectively. In this way, a large part of our target audience is made up of women, given that the majority of people with disabilities and the elderly are women. We are also able to help single mothers who, besides of being affected by the problems caused by sidewalks, need to take care of their child for them to be less impacted. To confirm that, we had an interview with a single mom with disabilities. She confirmed that the current sidewalks makes it difficult to walk because of the lack of accessibility and also the high temperatures that it gets. By that, we aim to change this scenario and improve their quality of life.

To understand the whole situation and needs, we’ve made a Google Forms research with Brasília’s population. It has taken 107 answers and we noticed that the problems related to current sidewalks are bigger than we thought. In this way, we started our researches about potentially new materials to give the ecological feature to the sidewalk. Besides that, we have not worked at any other organizations related to this problem, but we contacted some future users, like our school, which gave us donations to start prototyping it.

The ecological sidewalk Andape has accomplished its successful use in one of the local High School Leonardo da Vinci campi (image above) and its heading to its’ installment in the others. Although it attracted interest at a national level –- presented to the mayor of Foz do Iguaçu and during the National Science and Technology week and contacted by regional purchases -–, we decided to improve our research on the specific percentages of compounds and future tests on resistance and quality. In short, the project is currently serving one community for trial purposes and is going to expand during this year.

Our research was based on Chemistry and Physics related to Civil Engineering and mentored by a Chemistry teacher. This means we used a traditional product – paths – and improved it with different and recycled compounds to improve its quality.

By using sisal and scrap tire,we increased the sidewalk’s resistance and permeability while reducing cement’s percentage to lower it’s production and our dependence on this noxious material.

• Currently serving in a local school: approximately 1000 people that pass by, including students and staff.
• How many people we aim to reach in 2022: 10000 people, including local schools, condominiums and other private areas. Our first goal for 2022 is to reach private-enterprise areas because they are more accessible and manageable when talking about infrastructure. Public areas are our next target, because they are more difficult to change in Brazil, but the ones that most need change.

Andapé Institute have made a planning for scalability for the next 4 years:

• 2022: we aim to get the specialization of employees and sale the first 8000m² of the sidewalks, after getting the investiments;
• 2023: we must get market rise and expansion in Brazil, by pressuring the government;
• 2024: we pretend to have partnerships with municipalities and government, after getting the burocracy ready;
• 2025: we want to sale the firsts m² abroad, since we'll have a better visibility.

Besides all of those plannings, we are still in the pilot fase, so we want to improve it with the mentorship. We also know that our target public will be changing over those years, but our main objective is to improve women and elderly people lives, since we started it thinking about the walkability difficulties for those groups.

• https://innprogresstest.unige....
• https://institutoandape.wixsit...

We are using the plataform InnProgress to measure our growth in another program we are participating and we are also putting our evolution in our website, where pictures and awards are uploaded. The image above explain the progress we aim to achieve this year.

Our mains SDGs are SDG 5, SDG 11 and SDG 13:

• SDG 5 is related to the influence of women's participation in science. In addition, a large part of our target audience is made up of women, given that the majority of people with disabilities and the elderly are women and we are also able to help single mothers who, besides of being affected by the problems caused by sidewalks, need to take care of their child for them to be less impacted;
• SDG 11 mentions sustainabilty and accessibility in cities, two topics that we must target as a society;
• SDG 13 highlights the necessity of resilient and adaptive conditions to natural disasters, such as floods, that we aim to decrease.

We made a SWOT analysis to clarify those barries, and they are:

• Low visibility in the subject
• Elaboration bureaucracy
• Conservaties engineers refuse our innovative project
• Most of urban spaces already paved
• Real estate market
• The paving market consolidated

The Team:

Carolina Fernandes (left)

• Former chemistry monitor
• Awards in Mathematics Olympiads (OBMEP/OMDF)

Cecília Dias (right)

• Outstanding Awards in UN Simulations
• Experience with communication through social volunteering

The Institute began with the perception of a problem in cities: poorly maintained sidewalks, which, in addition to harming the environment, hinder the movement of people. From there, we work towards making local cities better and more sustainable. For this, we got our hands dirty and built a sidewalk with as little concrete as possible, adding recyclable materials.

We are #Open17ClimateGender winners by Crowd4SDG, finalists in the Geneva Trialogue, an entrepreneurship event at the University of Geneva; and got 2nd place in Brazilian's Future Olympics, promoted by MCTI.

Andape Institute has worked with two main partners to develop the ecological sidewalk project and expand it in Brasília:

Leonardo da Vinci (local High School): donated 100% of the materials for our research.

Sapientia (Future Olympics for interdisciplinary projects/hosted in Brazil): provided business workshops and opportunities to pitch our project to investors (including contact with the Ministry of Science and Technology of Brazil); awarded us 2nd Place at an international level.

As a team formed completely by young women, we also have two objectives: empower girls in STEM areas and reach other women. 

Science studies in Brazil are drastically decreasing and so is women participation in this field. According to the National Institute of Educational Studies and Research in Brazil, less than 30% of students pursuing engineering in higher education were women. This is just a tiny example of the low representation of girls in Brazilian STEM education. Bearing this in mind, Andape team is committed to increase these rates by supporting industries led by women (such as the sisal production in Brazil) and looking for future studies partnerships with women scientists and engineers.

Moreover, the ecological sidewalk Andape is also focused on women's necessities, since two populations that demand accessibility in the streets (persons with disabilities and the elders) are mostly women. In fact, more than 80% of the persons with disabilities live in urban areas and 60% of them are women, as stated by the Brazilian Statistics Institute. 

Thus, our project moves women in social, business and STEM areas, and it is one of our aims to increase our reach with HP’s Girls Save the World program support.

Current sidewalks, besides being made by polluting materials, are not accessible. Our project will make up for the pending shortages on the sidewalks, using recycling materials to reduce pollution. Our goal is cities with better sidewalk conditions, turning places more spacedes, accessible and ecological. By that, we put SDG 5 as one of our priorities for change, since, as already mentioned, women, in addition to being the group most affected by climate change, are the ones who can best reverse it. In this way, our team fits perfectly into the selection for The Pozen Social Innovation Prize. We will use the prize to structure our project and spread it across the globe after the mentorship.