Mexico City Will Green its Garbage Dumps

Mexico City has a trash problem – a big one. Just 6 percent of the city’s waste is recycled, with the rest filling vast landfills that officials say are getting out of control. So, the new Waste Commission decided to set some lofty goals in an attempt to transform one of the world’s biggest and messiest waste management systems into a green system that would rival those in San Francisco or the Netherlands.

From MSNBC:

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.

“The whole concept of recycling is very new in Latin America,” said Atiliano Savino, president of the International Solid Waste Association.

While many places are good at recycling one thing, such as aluminum, Savino said, he’s never seen a city revamp its recycling program on this scale in so little time. U.S. and European cities that now have recycling rates over 50 percent began decades ago.

But Mexico City has no choice. The federal government proposed to close the city’s main landfill this month, saying the 50 million-ton 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.

New processing centers will recycle 20% of Mexico City’s trash, compost 20% and burn another 45% for energy by 2012, according to the Waste Commission. The government will also harvest methane gas from Bordo Poniente, the city’s largest landfill, and use it to power the subway and light homes.

Considering that Bordo Poniente receives 700 truckloads of trash each and every day, such a program would make a huge difference. It will be a challenge for sure – especially getting the people of Mexico City to start sorting their trash, and to get the garbage worker’s union to collect separated waste. However they manage to do it, this will be a huge step forward for Latin America, providing a great example for many other cities with similar, if not as pressing, waste problems.

Link [MSNBC]
Photo credit: Flickr user maurortega

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