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AROUND THE WORLD 4: Mexico Opens Recycling Plant

Mexico became a pioneer in Latin America this week when it opened a plant that will recycle old plastic bottles to make new ones. The first country in Latin America to initiate such a program, Mexico is hoping that the plant will help the country’s excessive waste problem. The efforts of the plant are expected to double the amount of PET plastic recycled in the country.

Located near Toluca, Mexico, the plant is the biggest plastic bottle recycling facility in the world. Costing around $20 million dollars to build, the factory will be able to produce 15,000 tons of pure PET (an abbreviation for polyethylene terephthalate) plastic that will again be used to make soda bottles. To make this amount of plastic, 25,000 tons of old bottles will be ground down at the rate of 90,000 bottles per hour. All of these bottles mean less trash in the already stuffed landfills of Mexico. Sometimes piles of trash even wind up on the side of roads of because very few facilities in Mexico have the capacity to properly dispose of waste.

Mexico is only behind the U.S. in the number of PET plastic bottles that it uses. Unfortunately, Mexico has one of the lowest recycling rates in the world and only recycles a small amount of the mountains of plastic bottles produced. Since Mexico’s citizens consume the most sugary drinks of any population on the planet, the country will continue to use a lot of plastic bottles. However, with the new bottle plant, there will be more recycling.

--Written by Morgan Diamond

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