Where going green means making some green

While the US is gearing up for it’s biggest Earth Day celebration in 40 years, Mexico continues to greatly surpass us in “green” activities. We had been trying to discover how we could continue to recycle while in Mexico, but weren’t being given a lot of detailed information about our trash pick-up. Dave had basically been told that our housekeeper would take care of it, and that everyone recycled. Today, I got the whole story.
Not so long ago, Mexico used open garbage dumps to collect all of the city’s trash. Huge trucks simply continued dumping until the pit was full, then it was covered with dirt & they moved on to another dump. Cardboard shanty towns would crop up around the dumps and poor families would make a meager living by pulling anything of value out of the dumps and reselling it.
As Mexico City has worked to become healthier and cleaner over the last few years, this home-grown economy grew even larger. Every piece of cardboard, plastic, and glass can be sold to scrap dealers who resell it for a profit. In order to encourage recycling, the government simply supported the purchase of used items. Now, each garbage truck and garbage dump literally has people in it every day sorting through the trash to collect piles of recyclable materials. The trash gets picked up every few days so that there’s nothing too rotten in there, and every possible item is removed for reuse or recycling.
Amazing!