So this is all plastic.
holy [ __ ].
That's a river you're looking at.
I've never seen this amount of trash anywhere
It's really hard to comprehend, to see this amount of trash in one place... I've never
seen anything like it, and
it's profoundly sad, and I think it's even more sad if you realize
what a beautiful country it is where you're in and you see, you know, rainforest forests you see
beautiful valleys and mountains and volcanoes and then you look down at this river and
surely there are literal garbage dumps that are cleaner than this river. This is really sad.
So this is really the bank of of the river here, and it's quite astounding to think
that if we estimate there may be 10 million to 30 million kilos of plastic flowing through this
gorge every single year, if that were true, on one hand, that means it's about 10 times more
than all the plastic that's being put in the ocean from all the rivers in the United States
and secondly, it means that that equates to to roughly one to three percent of all the
plastic entering the oceans every year, which is which is just mind-boggling. Just one river
emitting perhaps as much as three percent of
all the plastic that's going to the ocean passing right through this this gorge.
So the story of the Rio Motagua is quite a special one
and it starts in Guatemala city. Most people in Guatemala live on the highlands
Guatemala city is a major town and most of the waste gets brought to a landfill on the edge of
the city, which incidentally is also the start of this river here the Rio Las Vacas; so,
what happens is that when it rains part of that trash flows off this landfill into the river.
Then of course you also have poorer communities along the river where you don't have any waste
management you don't have any trucks collecting their waste so naturally what they do is they
also use this already very dirty river as their waste management tool.
you don't see any difference if you put your trash in the river. At the same time, there's
also illegal dumping happening and actually we see some of that happening right here.
Then it comes down here, it arrives here at this hydropower site where during flash floods there's
just so much water that actually the water overtops the dam so then the trash runs down
the river and then a few tens of kilometers downstream here enters the Rio Motagua.
We're here now at the point where the Rio Las Vacas enters the tributary
meets the main branch of the river called the Rio Motagua so down there
is the Motagua and up there is the Las Vacas just to get the name straight and
really that's where the trash flows into the river and then heads all the way to the Caribbean Sea.
and the amount of trash that you see just laying here it's
absolutely incredible.
It's... yeah flying in here it's such a beautiful country so
the hills, the valleys, absolutely gorgeous. You don't see this from the sky this just looks like
like pebbles or rocks and then once you land
you're basically standing on a rubbish dump.
What's interesting is that if you look upstream at that confluence at the Rio Motagua,
it's a clean river. Here you can see if you look at the riverbanks, this is how a river is supposed
to look like. Completely clean no trash down here; so this is the future of the Rio Motagua.
The dirtiness, the pollutedness starts when this tributary enters the Rio Motagua. Then what
happens is that the trash comes down there's these two fractions of waste you have the stuff
that is not very buoyant that kind of sticks to the the riverbed and the banks and the closer you
get to the ocean the less of that you see because the stuff that easily gets stuck will get stuck
quite soon already and then what's left behind are the really buoyant objects so the
styrofoam, the bottles, the shoes, which just race down this river hundreds of kilometers
to the ocean. The mouth of the Rio Motagua - hola! Where it then enters the ocean the majority
beaches ends up back on shore quickly after leaving the river and that's what you then see
is miles and miles of Caribbean coastline being covered in a thick layer of trash.
Yeah, so here we see trash that washed out of the Rio Motagua
and a lot of it ends up here on the coastline of maybe the Caribbean coast of Guatemala.
it keeps going.
If you look closely, it's mostly, it's predominantly, packaging so you see a lot of bottles
styrofoam, but you also see a surprising amount of shoes. Now,
American football
see a lot of toys as well
and let's see what else do we find here. There's another recognizable object
that's another toy pig or piggy bank of some sort.
We got a soap dispenser.
Many shoes. It's one of the more surprising things.
Markers; you have cutlery.
more toys
It's crazy. so I think that's the story of the um the Rio Motagua it starts in Guatemala City
and it ends in the Caribbean sea and seeing that entire journey
in person, it was for me a confirmation that it's important to understand that story to
design the right solution for it and I think that's what we need to design
our capabilities for with the River Team is understanding these rivers and then
finding the right solution. The story here is very clear why this is such a uniquely polluted river
it's a unique story and I truly think this river can be restored to its former glory
you