Playa del Carmen, Q.R. — Both residents and tourists using Playa del Carmen beaches are being asked to take their garbage with them. A bucket load of garbage was recently removed from a popular beach after a weekend of locals hitting the sand and sea.
Lourdes Varguez Ocampo, Director of the Federal Maritime Terrestrial Zone (Zofemat) for Solidaridad, says people need to pick up their garbage from the beaches. She says the beaches are outfitted with organic and inorganic garbage cans for public use.
She says if people don’t want to use the onsite cans, then they can take their garbage home with them.
“If they don’t want to put it there, they can take it home and put it in their trash can,” she said adding that it is important to “avoid contamination of the beaches at all costs.”
A backhoe bucket was recently filled with beach garbage that consisted mostly of packaged food wrappers and plastic bottles. Ocampo added that last weekend at Punta Esmeralda, a used disposable diaper was found left on the shore.
“That speaks very badly about the people who are going out to enjoy our beaches because they don’t mind polluting. It is not everyone, but there are some visitors who are still reluctant to collect their waste and are not concerned about preserving the environment,” she stressed.
