Havana produces 23,000 cubic meters (m3) of garbage every day, but the Cuban regime only collects 68% of that urban waste. This means that 32% (7,600 m3, equivalent to three Olympic swimming pools) remains at street level and that has turned the capital of the Island into "a critical focus of health insecurity" due to the proliferation of rodents and mosquitoes, carriers of diseases such as dengue and leptospirosis, in addition to causing fires due to the production of methane gas. Alsolike what happened in Lawton at the beginning of this year 2024 when neighbors set fire to a landfill.

This is stated in the report 'Havana, capital of waste', which the Cuban Observatory of Citizen Audit (OCAC), advised by the Cuba Siglo 21 ideas laboratory, has prepared and published this April, after doing field in the 15 capital municipalities. On their website, they include ainteractive map in which by clicking on the trash can symbols you can see photos of the trash cans found.

The study clarifies that not only is one third of the garbage generated in Havana not collected, but that, of what is collected, less than half (40%) is recycled. It is influenced by the fact that the budget that was dedicated to garbage collection in 2022 represented 0.83% (6.5 million pesos) of the total money available to the capital. In general, only 1.63% of the annual total was allocated to the environment. This amount, in the opinion of the signatories of the report, is "clearly negligible."

According to the report, attempts at foreign investment in garbage collection do not materialize and, furthermore,the Japanese donation of 10 million dollars between 2019 and 2020 has not been noticed. In practice the streets are becoming dirtier. In fact, the provincial director of Communales, Onelio de Jesús Ojeda, acknowledged in 2023 that there are almost 200 garbage collection teams paralyzed. It is also influenced by the fact that low salaries (3,500 pesos per month, equivalent to 10 dollars), have caused garbage collection to become a job that only prisoners do.

In June 2016, according to the official press, there were 28 foreign, European and Canadian companies interested in waste management on the Island. None of these offers came to fruition. Rodrigo Malmierca, during his time as Minister of Foreign Investment, assured in 2018 that an agreement had been reached with a Spanish company interested in garbage collection, which had later collapsed because the company had not been able to fulfill its commitments. Like this one there were more ads. They all turned to salt and water.

The Cuban Citizen Audit Observatory predicts that if the lack of political will to liberalize productive forces, move towards a market economy and make foreign investment attractive persists, "it is foreseeable that health insecurity" will worsen in the short and medium term. .

More garbage as the years go by

Between 2015 and 2020, garbage production in Havana increased exponentially, going from 16,841 m3 in 2015 to 26,134 m3 in the year of the pandemic. The authorities attribute this to the increase in population, the 73 hospital centers and 557 industries and the 87,991 self-employed workers and the 3,592 MSMEs in the capital.

They have also justified it with the lack of containers and collection trucks. At the end of 2019, there were 141 collection trucks on the Island (one hundred of them donated by Japan). Last August, the governor of Havana, Yanet Hernández Pérez, assured that only 39% of the 440 garbage collection teams were working. The rest were missing tires, batteries, rims...

To alleviate the lack of State resources, it was decided to apply fines of 4,000 pesos for throwing garbage outside the container or after hours; from 3,500 to 4,500 for throwing solid waste (wood, debris, metals...) There were also 2,500 to 3,000 pesos for those who moved the containers. But that obviously did not stop the generation of landfills on the streets.

In an interview with CiberCuba, Juan Antonio Blanco, president of Cuba Siglo 21, assured that on the island "the situation is caught by pins and needles" and "any detail out of control can cause a popular tsunami." And that happens, in his opinion, because the regime is suffering a deep crisis and cannot control 10 million Cubans.

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