Plastic Pollution in Guatemala from Heavy Rains

Mounds of plastic are piling up on the coast of Guatemala!Show more

What's happening here?

➡️ In Guatemala, there’s just one official basurero (landfill) for the entire country in the nation’s capital of Guatemala City. Over a third of the country’s total trash ends up in the Guatemala City basurero each year, but not all of it stays there.⁠⁠
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During the rainy season, trash from the city’s basurero gets washed into the Rio Motagua - Guatemala’s longest river that runs about 300 miles from the remote central highlands to the Gulf of Honduras in the Caribbean.⁠⁠
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The trash that enters the Motagua pours out of the river into the Gulf Of Honduras, where ocean currents deposit it back onto Guatemala’s coast.

This situation is real. Recent heavy inland rains are creating this endless stream of plastic pollution and our Guatemala cleanup crews have been hard at work cleaning it up, while we've been simultaneously exploring locations in the river to install a boom system to stop trash before it ever reaches the ocean.