Mexico City closes Bordo Poniente rubbish dump

Mexico City closes Bordo Poniente rubbish dump

Scavengers who scrape a living at the dump are hoping for formal jobs in recycling
The city says it is negotiating with 1,500 pepenadores, or scavengers, informal workers who traditionally have been a key part of Mexico's waste-management system. They live at dumps and scavenge and resell material. Pablo Tellez Falcon, who heads the scavengers guild, said 300 pepenadores work at the Bordo Poniente dump and that he will negotiate for a written agreement with the city so they don't lose their livelihoods. He said the city and the scavengers have only had an oral agreement until now.

Mexico City has closed its main rubbish dump, Bordo Poniente, which is one of the world's biggest open-air landfills. At its peak, hundreds of lorries were dumping more than 12,000 tons of waste each day. Continuing a long process under Mayor Ebrard, the latest large project is to close the city's largest dump, which has been receiving less and less refuse as recycling programs started several years ago begin to have an effect. "I've seen this dump - huge does not describe it. I remember reading a stat some time back saying that Mexico City produces enough garbage to fill Estadia Azteca each day."

Over its lifetime, Bordo Poniente has accumulated over 76 million tons of trash. Closing its operations is expected to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 2 million tons of carbon dioxide per year. Through recycling and composting programs, the city has already cut its annual waste in half in the last year. By adopting strict laws to prohibit illegal dumping at the site, the changes in the next year are expected to be even more monumental. Concrete giant Cemex SAB has already agreed to purchase some 3,000 tons of waste daily to turn into energy, according to government undersecretary Juan Jose Garcia Ochoa.

One of the world's worst waste management systems will now become one of the greenest.
As of Monday, all 700 trucks that carry garbage to the Bordo Poniente dump will stop hauling in waste and instead be used to help move it into a recycling separation and composting plant on site. A new plant will open for recycling construction waste into building material and the city will start working with the 1,500 pepenadores, or scavengers, who had informally worked at the dump to resell material. Other smaller dumps are expected to open to manage remaining waste. Trucks will still be allowed to enter the recycling separation plant and a composting plant on the site. 

The Bordo Poniente dump was established on a dry lake bed in the 1980s, partly to handle rubble from the devastating Mexico City earthquake of 1985. Closing the dump will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by a minimum of 1.8 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year, according to the city government.

The Mexican capital has about 8.8 million residents, but its metropolitan area holds more than 20 million. The city has been working for years to turn one of the planet's biggest and messiest waste management systems into the greenest, at least in Latin America. Three years ago, the city recycled only six per cent of its garbage. Today, that number is close to 60 per cent, having grown substantially in the last year, Garcia said.

Sources:
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UPI.com
Teacher in Mexico
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