February 9, 2009

1 Min Read
The Greening of Mexico City?

According to an Associated Press (AP) report, Mexico City is pushing to build the infrastructure to dramatically increase the city's recycling rate.

From the article:

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. 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.

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.

What do you think? Does such an ambitious plan have a chance in infierno of succeeding?

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