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It was cleaning day in Cancun a few days ago. Last Friday, the city held a massive beach cleanup that spanned approximately 14 miles on the ground in the mangrove section of Cancun’s Kukulkan Boulevard, not to mention 3 miles of area in the nearby waters.
The cleanup was organized by three levels of local government, as well as municipal environmental associations and local school volunteers. In total, they removed over three tonnes of garbage from the land and sea of major areas of Cancun.
Cancun Committed To Keeping Beaches And Tourist Areas Looking Clean
While this is a huge amount of waste collected, the bright side is that this undertaking has shown that the Cancun municipality is undoubtedly committed to keeping the city and its beloved outdoor spaces looking clean throughout the year. Even though Cancun is a bustling beach destination, you can feel secure knowing that you can enjoy trash-free sands while on vacation in this part of the Mexican Caribbean.
From sargassum to trash, it takes work to keep the shores of Cancun beautiful for visitors. However, the city is investing heavily to keep beaches spotless in 2023. Last year, over 180 full-time workers were in charge of keeping the beaches along Cancun’s coastline pristine.
This year, officials are planning to continue to implement plans and policies that have worked to help beach maintenance, including hiring employees to patrol the beaches, organizing massive cleanup projects like the one this past Friday, as well as hire experts in the field to make sure tourists aren’t discarding any prohibited items on the beach.
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Making comments on this massive cleanup was the head of Ecology of Benito Juarez, Tania Fernandez Moreno. She explained that the tourist areas of Cancun with the highest concentrations of garbage were parts of the Hotel Zone and the Malecon Tajamar entrance. The trash collected included large items like discarded boats, tires, and wood.
Other garbage items were hundreds of pounds of recyclable glass, plastic, cardboard, paper, cans of paint and oil, as well as non-recyclable and single-use items. Volunteers and other cleanup workers put the trash in bags that weighed over 30 pounds.
Cleanup Continued Into The Cancun Mangroves
The director of Coneción Nativa Cancun, Alfredo Benítez Miter, mentioned to the press that around 90 pounds of solid waste was collected from the inside of the mangrove area, which is a section not directly visible to tourists staying in the busy Cancun Hotel Zone. This part of the garbage removal project was organized and cleaned up by the civil environmental association.
“Single-use items were found, such as disposable dishes, beer cans, and water bottles. At first glance, it looks clean, but with each wave, the garbage is dragged, and it remains inside the mangrove, which serves as a filter since it traps the garbage, and it’s easier for us to grab it there than floating in the water,” the director stated.
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Over 800 persons worked at Cancun’s garbage cleanup last week. The next scheduled cleanup of Cancun’s mangrove will be in two months’ time.
Whether they are spearheaded by caring local or international travelers or organized by government officials, cleanup projects in Cancun are a routine occurrence. Last year, it was reported that a number of unique disposable (meaning, non-recyclable/single-use) items had been found on an early winter local beach cleanup. Among the items collected along the beach were wet wipes and cigarette butts. They also removed some typical beach trash items like beer cans and bottles.
The items collected, like wet wipes, aren’t biodegradable, which means that they stay around in the landscape for a long time – decades, really. To get more information, here’s a quick list of how long common household materials take to compost.
Keeping Cancun Beautiful
In an effort to help paradise, well, stay paradise, here are some sustainable travel tips. From swapping plastic to reusable and some affordable ideas for your vacation, this list has ways to help you waste less on your travels.
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FANNY
Monday 13th of February 2023
I HOPE THIS COMMENT IS TRUE.