What’s Going On With Our Garbage?

One of the biggest concerns of all Sanmiguelenses is how we dispose of our garbage. The most common questions we have heard are:

Why are the new garbage trucks so much smaller, leaving so much garbage on the streets?
Why, in the age of environmental awareness, do we have a system that makes recycling and composting almost impossible?
How can we make garbage collection more efficient and less wasteful?

Recently I met with Regidor Ing. Helio Bastien and asked him these very questions. He responded by explaining the contract the city has and why it is ineffective.

During the administration of Ricardo Villareal, the city council negotiated a 15-year contract with two companies. One – we’ll call them company A – is responsible for garbage collection. The second – we’ll call them company B – is responsible for running the city landfill.

Company A charges 120 peso per tonne of garbage. Company B charges 90 pesos per tonne. The agreement is that San Miguel will produce 90 tonnes of garbage per week. If the city produces less than that, the government pays a fine to both Company A and B. If the city produces more, the government also pays a fine.

San Miguel on average produces about 120 tonnes of garbage daily. On holidays and long weekends that goes up to 140 or 150 tonnes, sometimes even 160. So, we are regularly being fined for too much garbage.

However, both company A and B, will not allow recycling as it reduces their profits. Once the trucks arrive at the landfill, they do process what they can sell to recycling facilities but as we have all seen, it is very difficult to sort through when everything has been compressed together. Moreover, there is absolutely no separation of organics for composting.

There is another concern. The Municipal Landfill must comply with NOM 083 de SEMARNART. This deals with the conditions of both workers and the landfill itself. Right now, it does not comply. The conditions of landfill workers are abysmal. The landfill itself is beyond capacity.

This raises the question; how do we get out of this poorly negotiated deal that does not meet the needs or desires of the residents of San Miguel de Allende?

If the municipal government decides to pull out of the contract, they will be fined 60,000,000 pesos. However, the contract stipulates that it must be re-ratified every 3 years. Right now, they are incompliant in that they have not re-ratified under the current municipal president, Luis Alberto Villareal.

We, at the Observatorio Ciudadano de San Miguel de Allende, invite you to investigate and come to your own conclusions. We would like to see a new contract negotiated that includes the separation of recyclable and organics for composting. We urge the municipal government o reconsider this contract and work towards a more efficient and environmentally benign system of garbage collection.

 

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