Mexico City wants to turn one of the planet’s biggest and messiest waste management systems into the greenest in Latin America, if not the developing world.
A newly formed Waste Commission is working to build four state-of-the-art processing centers in the next four years to recycle, compost or burn for energy 85 percent of Mexico City’s trash — compared with about 6 percent recycled today. If it works, it would put this sprawling, polluted metropolis in a league with San Francisco, the Netherlands and other top recyclers, and first among developing cities, where the recycling rates mostly hover around 10 percent.
“The whole concept of recycling is very new in Latin America,” said Atiliano Savino, president of the International Solid Waste Association.
PHOTO: AP
While many places are good at recycling one thing, such as aluminum, Savino said he had never seen a city revamp its recycling program on this scale in so little time. US and European cities that now have recycling rates of more than 50 percent began decades ago.
NO CHOICE
But Mexico City has no choice. The federal government proposed to close the city’s main landfill this month, saying the 50 million-tonne dump has become too full and leaches contamination. Scientists dispute that and the closing has been delayed by a city appeal in federal court for an extension. Yet waste management officials know that soon much of Latin America’s largest metro area will be forced into expensive, temporary alternatives for dumping trash.
It will take more than technology to recycle most of the 12,500 tonnes of trash the mega-city produces daily. As in much of the developing world, Mexico City residents aren’t accustomed to separating their garbage.
But Fernando Menendez, the dapper, silver-haired Waste Commission director, says naysayers need only look at the success of his other major environmental project. No one thought he could get Mexico City residents out of their cars to cut air pollution, either. But his Hoy No Circula campaign now idles at least 1.6 million cars a week.
“Nobody has ever done anything like this,” Menendez said of shutting down what he calls the world’s biggest landfill. “But it has to work. There’s no other option.”
The Bordo Poniente dump was built on a dry lake bed on the northeast edge of the city in part to handle the rubble from the devastating 1985 earthquake. It now takes about 700 truckloads of unsorted rubbish a day.
SORTING TRASH
The city has required residents to sort trash since 2003, but without providing the infrastructure to handle it. Ninety percent of garbage trucks lack separate compartments for organic and inorganic waste. Thirteen transfer stations are supposed to process waste separately. But on a recent afternoon at a mid-sized center, three men were shoveling tree branches into a pit with plastic foam cups.
That’s where the enterprising informal economy takes over. Mexico City’s garbage workers union officially employs 17,000 and at least 8,000 more unofficially. Paid drivers and so-called volunteers make extra cash collecting “tips” from customers and selling aluminum and cardboard from their routes. Some union members rake in as much as three times their wage.
Meanwhile, just outside the Bordo Poniente, garbage pickers, including some children, sift through waste on fast-moving conveyer belts with their bare hands in a foul and dangerous open-air pit.
The Waste Commission plans to replace the ad-hoc system with new processing centers — about 180 million pesos (US$13 million) apiece — that by 2012 will recycle 20 percent of Mexico City’s garbage, compost 20 percent more and burn another 45 percent for energy.
As of November, only one center, in the rural southern delegation of Tlahuac, had been approved. Menendez says he is negotiating with private investors to finance the other three, while the Tlahuac center will be paid for with public funds.
The government also will harvest methane gas from the Bordo for energy to power the subway and light homes.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to