Plastic bottles and mounds of trash lap onto the shores of a once pristine beach in a Honduran fishing village. It comes from neighboring Guatemala, carried down from a heavily polluted river.
Guatemala's Rio Motagua runs from the edge of the country's capital, Guatemala City, out to the Caribbean Sea. What once was a roaring river slows to a trickle in some areas, choked by trash.
"Everywhere you look, the mountains, the forest, the coastline, it's absolutely stunning... to me it was very shocking to see ," said Boyan Slat, the founder of The Ocean Cleanup.Slat and his team are in a fight against time to trap the trash, estimated to total around 20,000 tonnes a year, before it reaches the sea.
The issue stems largely from a tributary of the Rio Motagua, known as Rio Las Vacas, which is straddled by an urban landfill north of Guatemala City and also suffers from unlicensed waste dumping, according to The Ocean Cleanup. The organization has now installed a chain-link fence spanning the width of the Rio Las Vacas, creating a dam of sorts to stop the trash before it reaches the trunk of river.
While not yet fully operational, the fence could be key to intercepting the plastic, according to The Ocean Cleanup. However, Slat points out that a long-term solution lies in proper waste management.Register now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.comReporting by Luis Echeverria for Reuters TV; Writing by Kylie Madry; Editing by Lisa Shumaker
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