The state television station TV Yumurí broadcast a celebratory report last Thursday about the incorporation of the Base Business Unit for Raw Material Recovery in the municipality of Colón into the national campaign Cuba Recicla, while the province faces an acute crisis in waste collection: streets turned into dumping grounds, illegal waste burning, and less than half of the collection trucks operational.
The contradiction is hard to ignore. The very territory that cannot collect the trash from its streets is enthusiastically joining a recycling and circular economy initiative launched by the Ministry of Industries, as if the issue were merely a lack of civic culture rather than the structural collapse of the waste management system.
The campaign Cuba Recicla was officially launched on March 18, coinciding with World Recycling Day, by the Business Group of Recycling affiliated with the Ministry of Industries. It is expected to last 12 months, with quarterly evaluations, and aims to promote good recycling practices, strengthen the circular economy, and raise foreign currency through the export of materials such as copper, bronze, lead, stainless steel, and aluminum.
In the Yumurí TV report, a representative from the Colón unit explained the initiative's goal: "To promote a culture of recycling among the population. For that, we need to work with all economic stakeholders, schools, and local councils to reach the public with the intention of making them aware of the importance of raw material recovery at this time for the country."
However, the Colón unit itself operates with serious limitations. The municipality has 45 agencies eligible to sign recycling contracts, but only 25 have updated contracts. "We are calling on those companies," admitted the official before the cameras of the state channel.
Every Saturday, the unit organizes recycling days in various communities alongside the Committees for the Defense of the Revolution and constituency delegates. The materials that generate foreign currency through export include copper, bronze, lead, stainless steel, and cast and rolled aluminum. Workers' salaries range from 7,000 to 12,000 pesos per month, depending on the levels of recovery achieved.
Meanwhile, the reality on the streets of Matanzas is quite different. The director of the Municipal Communal Enterprise, Reynol Valdés García, publicly acknowledged that only 11 out of the 24 available trucks are operational, that of a workforce of 1,400 workers, only 930 are active, and more than 50% of the street sweepers are absent. The shortage of diesel is the main cause cited.
Residents have reported massive accumulations of garbage in streets such as Embarcadero, with waste blocking entire intersections. Additionally, an illegal dump was reported a block away from the Pediatric Hospital, which worsens the sanitary risk for the most vulnerable population. Illegal garbage burning in several neighborhoods generates toxic smoke that affects homes and pedestrians.
The situation escalated to the point that the local state-run press described the trash dumps of Matanzas as a "rotting tumor" that poses a health threat, an unusually stark expression for a media outlet controlled by the regime.
Health and political authorities in the province have recently acknowledged a «complex» epidemiological scenario due to active hepatitis outbreaks in the municipalities of Matanzas and Cárdenas, directly linked to the water supply crisis and irregularities in waste collection.
The collapse is not exclusive to Matanzas. In Havana, in February of this year, only 44 out of 106 garbage collection trucks were operational due to a lack of fuel. The situation reached such a point that Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz had to call on citizens to pick up the trash themselves over a weekend, mobilizing more than 450 teams in what was interpreted as a public acknowledgment of the system's failure.
At the national level, Cuba only recycles 40% of urban solid waste, according to official figures cited during the campaign launch. The Recycling Business Group reported exports of around 50 million dollars in recyclable materials last year, as stated by Isabel Cristina Alfonso González, an executive of the organization. This figure reveals that, for the regime, waste is primarily a source of foreign exchange, not a sanitary issue to be resolved for the citizens.
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