Mexico City Goes Green With Revamped Recycling Project

Mexico City is getting on the green wagon — with a brand new vision and a brand new Waste Commission to draft and oversee projects, the city is planning to construct four new waste processing plants over the next four years that will hopefully serve to compost and recycle 85% of the city’s garbage. An impressive number by any standards, it’s especially noteworthy when compared to the 6% recycling rate that the city is managing 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.

According to the article, Mexico City’s plan is the fruit of a difficult situation that requires immediate action: with the closing of their landfill as mandated by the federal government, city officials are now under intense pressure to come up with viable alternatives for managing the city’s waste. This sounds like a solid plan so far, but only time will tell if it the plants will be a success.

Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 12:14 pm and is filed under The Daily. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.