Well, visiting the recycling facility was in my to-do list, and now it is done. Last Tuesday Nery, the responsible for the Environmental Office of Suchitoto, took me to a tour of the facility which is about two kilometers away from the urban center. This initiative started as a voluntary program about ten years ago. People who were convinced of recycling put a sign in the front of their houses to tell garbage collectors that they were separating the garbage in three: organic material, glass, and plastic. The garbage collectors picked up the containers in separate days and then transported them to the recycling facility. Within years, the idea became popular and it turned into law.
Nowadays, all people in the urban area are required to separate their waste and it is treated in separate streams. Organic materials are piled up by month, moved regularly to allow aeration, filtered to ensure a homogeneous particle size and eliminate solid contaminants, and finally packaged for sale to local farmers. Glass is segregated by color and then sold to a glass making company. And plastic materials are collected and sold to intermediaries. Lixiviates from organic material treatment go to a filter before they are dumped to a small river.
Oversize items such as tires, big appliances, etc., are collected once or twice a year, and they are disassembled, if possible, into recyclable components. Non treatable materials and contaminants of the organic stream are collected in a landfill. To answer a question someone asked me, hazardous materials from hospitals are treated separately following public health rules. Other hazardous materials such as batteries or the like may go to the landfill.
The system is a good initiative. It has room for improvement, but I think it is a great achievement for the city.
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