Picture by Wonderlane: Flickr

Trash is piling up in city streets and illegal dumping sites are springing up after Mexico City closed one of the world’s largest landfills last month, without putting into place a viable alternative to deal with the refuse. With dumps in the surroundings cities refusing to take the trash, garbage trucks have been lining up for over five hours to unload at transfer stations, while citizens of the Mexican capital have taken to surreptitiously unloading their refuse on street corners.

According to plan, the Bordo Poniente landfill was closed on December 31 as scheduled. Eliminating the landfill, which was built on a dry lake bed to handle the clean up from a massive earthquake in 1985, will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about two million tons annually… assuming they can find something else to do with all that garbage.

The city is currently struggling to update its antiquated garbage system, where trucks drive around daily, ringing a bell to signal that people should bring out their trash. Those who can’t wait around all day for the garbage trucks have often resorted to leaving their trash on the city streets.

Officials have asked residents to separate their trash since 2003, but no real system was in place to handle it. What little recycling was getting done was being handled by the truck drivers, who would tear open garbage bags and pull out plastic and glass. Now the city plans to install large recycling containers on the street corners where people have been leaving their trash, hoping to encourage citizens to dispose of their garbage properly.

Tags: green mexico city, mexico city garbage

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