Guatemala’s Motagua River is among the ten-largest landfills in Latin America, and is alone responsible for 2% of the plastic emissions entering the ocean.
The Motagua River basin, the largest in Guatemala, covers an area of nearly 17,000 square kilometres in a 486 kilometres path along 96 municipalities. This enormous and vital watercourse, which empties into the Caribbean Sea, transports at least 8,500 tonnes of waste annually. This influx of debris directly threatens the Mesoamerican reef, the largest barrier reef in the Western Hemisphere, which stretches nearly 700 miles between Mexico and Honduras, and is a biodiversity hotspot.
The 60 types of hard corals found there are home to over 500 fish species, five species of marine turtles and one of the world’s largest gatherings of whale sharks, according to WWF.
“It is one of the ten largest landfills in Latin America and six million people throw waste into that landfill. This river alone is responsible for the emission of 2% of plastic into the ocean. We are dumping waste very badly,” said Jeanne Samayoa, a sustainable urbanism specialist and president of Haciendo Eco, a Guatemalan civil movement advocating for waste reduction.
Efforts to clean this body of water have been the aim of multiple initiatives so far, but the challenge persists: the more trash that is removed from the river, the more seems to be disposed into it.
“The Rio Motagua is an incredibly complex situation where you have a river that can fluctuate sometimes ten feet in a matter of days with heavy floods and rains, with rivers that are going eight or nine knots with giant trees, debris and all sorts of trash coming down it,” said Alex Schulze, CEO and co-founder of 4Ocean, a public benefit corporation dedicated to cleaning beaches and oceans and repurposing trash into bracelets while empowering local women. “It is incredibly tough to manage and stop all that plastic from reaching the coastlines and heading out into the ocean.”
Their efforts in Guatemala are focused around Puerto Barrio, near the mouth of the Motagua River, where they have successfully cleaned up a significant amount of the legacy plastic that has been polluting these beaches for years, Schulze added.
Now, a pioneering coalition of over 50 private and public organisations, including both governmental and non-governmental entities from various parts of Guatemala and beyond, is setting an ambitious goal: restoring the cleanliness of the Motagua Basin within the next decade.
The Alliance for the Motagua River is led by a handful of NGOs, including the Canada-based Ocean Legacy Foundation (which previously worked in México, Costa Rica and Panamá) and the Guatemalan Haciendo Eco. They rely on on collaborative efforts and education to fulfill their goal.
“The Alliance is not just an initiative, it is a socio-economic and environmental movement,” said Chloé Dubois, co-founder and executive director of Ocean Legacy. “One of the main differences between this and previous initiatives is that we are aware that this is a problem that requires everybody’s contribution.”
The alliance’s strategy follows a proven methodology called EPIC, which they adapted to Guatemala’s specific requirements. This approach involves investment in education, public policies, infrastructure for regeneration, water treatment, waste management and cleanup task-forces, among other measures, Dubois shared.
Jeanne Samayoa of Haciendo Eco elaborated to FairPlanet on the four pillars of EPIC. In terms of education, the emphasis is on altering behaviours and instructing children about the significance of minimising plastic usage, especially single-use plastics. It also involves a push to increase recycling rates of plastic waste and enhance the composting of organic refuse.