School programme aims to triple reach recycling cooking oil

HardLevel's "Educar para Reciclar – Heróis do Ambiente" programme, which teaches schoolchildren about recycling used cooking oil, aims to reach 35,000 students across 25 municipalities and 120 schools next school year. In its first year it involved over 12,000 students, 45 schools and eight municipalities. The scheme combines classroom education, IoT-enabled oil collection points and family engagement, addressing Portugal's persistent shortfall in domestic collection of used cooking oil despite legal targets. HardLevel says its network already covers over 100 municipalities and roughly 10,000 restaurants, and expects to exceed one million kilograms of household oil collected annually by 2027.