BUSINESS: 327 PRACTICES
IMERYS Group is the world leader in mineral-based industrial solutions, offering specialized solutions necessary for its customers. IMERYS INDUSTRIAL MINERALS GREECE SINGLE MEMBER SOCIETE ANONYME mines and processes industrial minerals, mainly bentonite and perlite.
The project’s main goal is to transform a decades-long land reclamation and environment rehabilitation institution, such as the plant nursery of IMERYS INDUSTRIAL MINERALS GREECE S.A. on Milos, into a dynamic educational destination for the schools of the island’s local society.
More specifically, the initiative introduces the children into their homeland’s natural treasures, i.e. the local plant species, and, through targeted educational activities, teaches them their names and ways to recognize them in their natural environment, their survival mechanisms under the harsh climate conditions of Milos, their ways of reproduction, and their applications as indicated by the folk tradition of Milos and Kimolos.
The schools of the Milos-Kimolos islands.
The initiative was launched in 2016 and was designed and planned as an on-going activity.
The life of the Company’s plant nursery on Milos counts already almost three decades of innovative environment rehabilitation and biodiversity methods as well as educational activities targeting the local community’s schools, while at the same time offering its valuable know-how to other Cycladic islands when asked by the pertinent local authorities.
Although an activity dating back to years earlier than 2010, in 2016 the idea was put forward to organize the plant nursery’s educational activities establishing a framework of pupils’ and students’ visits to the actual site of the nursery and of enlightening seminars and talks also “in situ” or at the Company’s premises on the island. This educational program is built on the “backbone” of the nursery’s various traditional social contribution activities, such as tree-plantings, or other reclaiming practices, such as maintaining or elaborating already existing rehabilitation works. Within this context several such educational activities have since taken place.
More specifically, in 1994 the plant nursery started to reproduce local and endemic Milos plant species with the goal to use them in its mines’ rehabilitation works on the island. Thus, it became quite early the “nucleus” of the Company’s biodiversity policy, and was very often called to offer its valuable know-how to other Cycladic islands and areas of Attica, too. On top of that, the plant nursery became very soon a place of environmental education for both the primary and the secondary schools of Milos and Kimolos.
As of 2016, an educational program was organized with the goal to introduce the school children of Milos into the wonderful world of plants and biodiversity and to make them understand the connection mechanisms between the plant species and the environment of the island (its climate and soil conditions). Therefore, special “lessons” were organized addressed to the children of the elementary, primary and secondary schools of the island.
Within the framework of the aforementioned educational activities, thorough reference is also being made to the Company’s mine-rehabilitation methods adapted to the island’s specific climate conditions and to its biodiversity policy. The educational program is directly interwoven with other social activities, such as tree plantings of local tree species, or restoring rare plants in their natural ecosystems (i.e. Sea Lily at the Plathiena beach, etc.) with the cooperation of various local social bodies active in environmental issues.
In 2016, 10 visits and 12 targeted educational seminars for 160 pupils of various school levels were organized to the plant nursery.
In 2017, 216 pupils of all grades of the Milos/Kimolos schools visited the Plant Nursery or attended the relevant seminars.
Company’s Milos Plant Nursery (visits) or Office Premises (seminars).
The Milos Plant Nursery’s Educational Program is being carried out with the Milos Mining Museum’s (also administered by IMERYS) cooperation and in consultation with the island’s school community and local educational authorities.
Two company executives working locally, at the Company’s premises on the island, are occupied with the Plant Nursery’s Educational Program organization every year, as part of their job description. Furthermore, as far as the actual implementation of the Educational Program is concerned, more Company employees may also be involved according to the specific organized visits or lessons.
The “Milos Plant Nursery as Educational Destination” initiative enhances both, its Biodiversity and Social Contribution policy targeting the local community of Milos, where it operates since many decades.
