A not-so green Games.

I spotted this recycled cardboard furniture at the aquatics centre. It's also in all of the athletes' rooms. Seems like Guad organizers are hosting an environmentally friendly game right?? Not so much. There's no recycling.

There's an impressive collection of plastic water bottles in my hotel room. I haven't been able to find a recycling bin so I just toss them in my backpack and bring them home at night. Yesterday I learned why.

Apparently: Guadalajara isn't doing the recycling thing at this Pan American Games. This is exceptionally unfortuante considering the amount of bottled water everyone is drinking. (I know. I know. But this is Mexico. At home I'm faithfully on the tap.)

The issue came up Saturday when a group of officials from Toronto were touring the athlete's village. A City of Toronto staffer asked how they're handling waste and recycling. The answer was simple: stuff goes in the garbage.

What else is interesting is that the Games seems to be making other efforts to go green. The furniture in all the athletes' rooms, as well as furniture at some of the venues, is made of compressed recycled (so they say?) cardboard. It's supposedly being donated afterwards?

I feel like they should have skipped the cardboard furniture and sprung for some blue bins.

Toronto's organizing committee promises the Big Smoke will be taking a different approach.

A silver lining I suppose: I've never realized how conditioned I am to recycle. Other Canadians I've spoken to about this are also struggling with some serious Mother Nature guilt. So that's a good thing right?

In the meantime, I wonder what customs will say to a suitcase full of plastic bottles... Any former or current Guad locals out there have any suggestions?

(IN SPORTS NEWS: Toronto was in 3rd place overall when I left the main press centre this morning. The US is in first, with 57 gold and 156 medals overall. Next is Brazil, with 26 gold and 68 in total. We're right behind with 18 gold and 66 overall. Mexico is fifth with 16 gold and 56 overall.)

Comments

[Liz Benneian]

You didn't mention that the site of the games was built in what was supposed to be a protected natural area. There's nothing green about these games. Pam Am organizers should put some rules in place for host cities.

[Os]

You are right about recycling in Guadalajara, although some parts of the city have established programs to do recycling and people are changing their attitudes.

However, in fairness, in Mexico the trash generated by an average household is not nearly close to what is generated in Canada, there are no weekend flyers, not nearly as comparable generation of trash by plastic containers or coffee cups.

True, there is a lot to do in Mexico with regards to recycling, but I would said trash generation is quite low compared to Canada and the trash is collected on a daily basis in residential areas.

By the way, do you know that Guadalajara is known as the Mexican Silicon Valley?.. write something about that! Enjoy!

[Gary]

"Toronto" is in 3rd place behind USA and Brazil? I'm very pleased we have skipped provincial status and gone straight to being a nation state! Does that make Ford our Prime Minister or our King?

[Adlih]

There's actually a lot of recycling going on here. The thing about Mexico, as a developing country with a large informal economy, is that everything, even garbage is business. I live in Mexico City and the city employee who picks up our garbage, who is paid (probably minimum wage) by the city government, still charges every person whose garbage he collects. I tried to get some wooden pallets to make garden furniture and there's not a place where I can find them for free, same happens with milk crates and the sturdier type of cardboard boxes.
Programs have been put in place to start separating garbage into organic and inorganic for collection (the notion of organic or not is different than in Canada), and honestly, a lot of what can be salvaged, reused, re-purposed or recycled, never makes it to the landfill because it gets picked up by people who do scavenging for a living, and sold to recycling depots and other businesses. I agree it's not the best solution, but were the government to take over these people's function, it would probably be as inefficient, and these people would be left without a way to make a living. As usual there's too many things involved int what seems to be a simple environmental issue, but as a Mexican-Canadian, all I can say is, that I'm too concerned with trying to survive here without all I had back home to feel guilty for too long about not having a blue bin, as bad as that might sound. At least a lot of us separate our garbage.