In June, I went on a weekend trip to the beachy city of Los Cabos, Mexico with my family. Our flight left early friday morning from Austin, and after a quick layover in Atlanta (we were literally running through the airport), we were sitting poolside with margaritas in our hands by noon. We stayed at the Royal Solaris, a family friendly resort that was made to look like a pueblo and gave off an authentic mexican vibe. Like most of the other resorts in Cabos, we had beach access from the hotel and could hear the sound of waves crashing against the shore from our beds.
Since we were only there for 3 days, we decided it would be best to just be spontaneous with our plans. This was quite a change from our other family trips, which usually consist of following a lengthy itinerary of activities and end with the desire for a stay-cation from our vacation. For this reason, taking it easy was quite possibly the best thing we have ever done. Most of our day time was spent relaxing in the pool and taking advantage of the all-inclusive food and boozy drinks. At night, we would all sit in the sand with speakers blasting Bollywood music, watching the ocean, and cracking jokes. One night, the guys even smoked a couple cigars (and taught me how to smoke one too). It was a super chill time with the most adrenaline rush coming from bootleg zumba and a UTV tour. We really spent our time just taking in the beauty of the city, and trying to retrieve high school Spanish skills to be able to talk to the locals.
However, though the weekend was spent forgetting the stressors and realities of everyday life, I could not help but notice one of Los Cabos’ major flaws - the absence of recycling. At first, I thought this problem was isolated to the resort, however I soon realized that there was not a single recycling bin anywhere in the major tourist areas of the city. In the downtown market, there were plenty of wastebaskets and ironically even a sculpture made from plastic water bottles, but no place for actual recyclables. On the beach, there were trash bins every mile or so, but no recycling cans. Even in other American owned resorts like the Omni and the Hilton, there were only places for trash. I was shocked that something so simple was missing from such a heavily trafficked city, and even more amazed that its happening at such an imperative time. I knew I couldn’t be the only person worried about the lack of recycling options in Cabos, so I decided to do some research when I was back home.
Surprisingly, I did not find that many articles or sites talking about this issue, which was quite upsetting. Yet, from the limited sources, I was able to gather that the reason why there aren’t recycling bins in popular areas of the city is because they do not have the facilities to break down the products into reusable material. To add to that, the city cannot afford the machinery required for these facilities either. Thus, any form of recycling that they do have is by private companies which tourists have to go out of their way to find. While these companies do help collect plastic and aluminum items from schools and local businesses, they are ignoring a massive amount of waste that is accumulated by the tourist population. With the current global crisis of climate change, it is frustrating that the Mexican government is not doing more to help the city become more eco-friendly and that not enough tourists or residents are noticing the depth of the problem. Of course it is fun to go on vacation and forget the troubles of the world, but when these places don’t exist because of how we are neglecting this planet, then we will truly realize the changes that could have been made early on to save it.
Deuces,
D