Our little town of Chacala recently experienced a waste crisis when the trash pickup service stopped for several weeks. The landfill that usually accepts our garbage had caught on fire — the second time this year — and couldn’t take more waste until it was under control. Piles of trash accumulated on every street corner. Rotting food, plastic bags and bottles, styrofoam containers, soiled toilet paper, and other unmentionables were strewn everywhere.
The county government provided no alternate plan for trash removal, leaving the community on its own to figure out a solution. Several Chacaleños rallied to pay for dump trucks to haul trash away, at a cost of tens of thousands of pesos.
The crisis got me thinking about just how much trash is left behind on Mexico’s beaches, how waste removal is handled (and mishandled), who is responsible, and how we can all do a better job reducing waste, especially tourists.
Tourists often complain about how much litter is on Mexico’s beaches and assume that local Mexicans are primarily responsible. This is not only condescending and harmful cultural stereotyping, it couldn’t be further from the truth. Foreign tourists and out-of-area visitors contribute far more waste than locals, putting extreme pressure on communities to keep beaches clean with little to no government support.
Take Chacala as an example, our resident population is about 500 people. But on any given weekend or holiday, we can see our population quadruple to 2,000 people or more. Mondays are the worst day to walk the beach after everyone has gone and the evidence is left behind – styrofoam plates, plastic cups and bottles, dirty diapers, plastic bags, cigarette butts – you name it. While plenty of people use the trash cans provided, there is simply too much waste for them to hold.
And when the garbage cans are overflowing, it falls on community members and local business owners to organize volunteers to clean up or pay someone to collect it, all at their own time and expense.
Instead of complaining about trash, here are some ideas for visitors to help keep beaches clean:
- Separate your trash: Much of the waste people generate is recyclable or biodegradable. You can reduce the amount of waste that ends up in landfills by separating recyclables and food waste from other trash. Many beach towns have receptacles or collection centers for recyclables and organics.
- Bring reusable shopping bags: This is already common practice in many parts of the world, but for some reason, when people go on vacation, they seem to forget. When you travel, pack your good habits and a few reusable bags with you. Or buy some bags here. Mexico has one of the longest reusable market bag traditions in the world.
- Buy more whole foods: Fill those reusable bags with fresh fruit, vegetables, bread, tortillas, and other goods that can be bought locally and don’t come in plastic packaging.
- Bring a plate to taco stands: No one can resist the temptation of a street taco, but you can resist being given a styrofoam plate to eat it on. Next time you have a hankering for a taco, leave no trace and bring your plate (and cloth napkin) with you.
- Order drinks that come in returnable bottles: Skip beverages that come in plastic bottles and choose ones that come in returnable glass bottles or are made fresh in large batches like aguas frescas that are served in glass cups or clay mugs.
- Bring a to-go container to restaurants: If your eyes are bigger than your stomach and you often have leftovers when eating out, make sure to bring a reusable container to bring leftovers home instead of having the restaurant put them in a styrofoam box.
- Patronize businesses that reduce waste: It’s becoming more common in Mexico (and in some cities, it’s the law) to not use disposable plates, bags, and other items at shops and restaurants, and opt for natural and biodegradable products. (We have a local ice cream shop in Chacala that uses coconut husks as bowls!) Seek out and patronize those businesses that are taking action to reduce waste.
- Put trash in cans with lids: Leaving trash in bags on the street attracts dogs that scatter it around and leave a mess. Put trash in a can with a lid, and if your hotel or rental doesn’t have one, be a champ and buy one for them.
- Collect trash while walking the beach: Since you are likely to walk the beach anyway, why not bring a trash bag with you and pick up some litter along the way?
- Donate to local limpieza efforts: The community you are visiting most likely has an environmental committee or limpieza campaign that is working to educate the public and raise money for waste removal, reduction, and recycling efforts. Ask around and find the groups in your community you can support.
This goes without saying, but companies that produce throw-away products are the real culprits of the world’s waste problem, not consumers. We are pressured to make better choices, and that certainly helps, but it’s corporations that need to be responsible for the life cycle of their products. As a society, we must continue to advocate for laws that hold companies accountable for the waste they produce, and as consumers, we must stop supporting companies that contribute to the problem.
Debbie Slobe is a writer and communications strategist based in Chacala, Nayarit. She blogs at Mexpatmama.com and is a senior program director at Resource Media. Find her on Instagram and Facebook.
“Foreign tourists and out-of-area visitors contribute far more waste than locals, putting extreme pressure on communities to keep beaches clean with little to no government support.”
To start with, lumping the foreign tourists you get there during the winter with all out of area visitors is very misleading. No matter what beach we go to in Mexico and we have been to many over our 16 years here, the people doing the littering on the beaches are not the foreign visitors. Long after the tourists are gone for the season, the same people flock to the beaches on weekends and leave a mess.
You get 2000 visitors on the weekends and most of them are foreigners? Really? Out of area visitors on weekends and out of tourist season, most of the year, are going to be Mexican, are they not? That is certainly our experience along the Costa Alegre.
The weekender out of area Mexicans are by far the worst in our experience. Most tourists and resident expats quickly learn to avoid the beaches on the weekends and are accustomed to taking a trash bag down to the beach on Mondays to clean up the mess left by the weekend Mexican visitors.
Decades ago, people north of the border tended to behave in the same manner. Over time, education has greatly reduced the problem there and local communities that benefit greatly from spending by beach visitors have learned it is very much in their interests to devote a small part of that benefit to providing numerous trash receptacles and beach cleanup after weekends.
I agree with you Daniel.
Daniel – I appreciate your perspective, and on the surface this seems like a valid observation. The waste that foreign tourists produce may not be in the form of leaving things behind on the beach, but the amount of products consumed that end up on the beach or strewn about the streets because towns don’t have the infrastructure to haul everything away is on par with what local tourists produce, especially in winter when it’s mostly foreign tourists. The plastic bottle of Coke you drink, the to-go containers you use, the toilet paper you throw in the trash — all of that has to go somewhere, and many small towns (like Chacala) don’t have sufficient systems in place to handle it all. So whether someone is leaving trash behind on the beach, throwing it in a trash can, or doesn’t handle it themselves because staff at a restaurant or hotel they are staying at takes it away, a lot of it ends up spread around streets or on the beach. You will see that the tips I offer are ways we can all reduce the amount of waste we produce no matter who we are or where we come from and how we can help local communities handle our outsized impact.
Mazatlán – It’s estimated that over 2.7 million tourists visited in 2018. It’s estimated that 400,000 plus were foreign visitors. Mexican tourists overwhelming outnumbered foreign tourists. I lived in Mazatlán for a year. It’s my observation that Mexican tourists would trash the tourist areas. After every weekend the beaches and the malecón were covered in trash. During the summer and holiday periods it was even worse. The Mexican tourists were rude, obnoxious, and inconsiderate of their fellow Mexicans who called Mazatlán home. Individuals and groups of expats would organize cleanup efforts in an attempt to keep the beaches and the malecón clean. As more and more condos and hotels continue to be built in Mazatlán’s tourist areas the infrastructure continues to be overwhelmed. In Mazatlán foreign tourists aren’t the problem!
If we all do our part, whether the trash is your fault or not, we can be part o the solution instead of the problem. When I walk the beach in the mornings with my dog I always have a bag with me to pick up trash. This has inspired others (Mexican and foreign alike) to do the same. I’ve had so many folks, of all walks, thank me for the effort and pledge to do better themselves. This builds awareness as others see you picking up trash and this can lead to changes in behaviors. For my and my families part, we are much more careful about what we bring to the beach and make sure we leave it better than we found it. Things get better, poco y poco. Just start in your community – “think global act local”
The rancheros on the beach with there horses should pick up there s-h-i-t but they don’t , they should pay ,because they make money with the touristes.
I know factually that the two beach north and south of my community are used by locals. Very little to zero expats. The trash that is left behind if horrific and the attitude of these people who leave trash sickens me. When something is said to them in a nice way I received a response of “This is what we do in Mexico”. I place some of this on the local goverment in the Rosarito/Ensenada areas with there lack of proper disposal areas along the beaches and lack of trying to educate the children on the negative impact it has on e community.
I teach soccer here and I used to help do clean up around the field area when we were having a event. I stopped doing it because even with trash cans available the people who come and play just drop the trash on the ground. Even when the parents are there as the parents do the same. Not all but many do.
So when you say it is not done mostly by locals I say in my area you are so wrong. Trash is every where here. Very little pride in the communities and the goverment fails to take the lead on this.
Thank you. Having lived on the beach in Bucerias for 6 years the patterns are clear. It may be.different in Chacala but here a great deal of the problem is also attributable to the general trash issues in the valley, along the canals and in the streets of the non-beach areas. Garbage is everywhere. The rains come and flood it all down the streets, into the arroyos and rivers and it ends up in the bay. The ocean then spits it back up onto the beach. Yes tourists of all stripes need to do better but so does the community in general and the local governments and schools need to bring education and enforcement. Mexico is a leader in biodegradable non plastic bags, food containers and other garbage reducing products but that only goes so far.
We’re all pretty much part of the problem right now, with a few exceptions, and dividing the world into tourists and locals has never helped solve a problem, is what I seen to have learned after about 25 years of doing environmental journalism in a mountain ski resort town. Figure out ways to tackle problems together. Putting trash in cans with a lead is not a solution, IMO, it’s just just treating one tiny symptom of the vast problem of over-production, over-consumption and waste, and the richer a country is, the more they own those problems.