Reducción de Plásticos San Pedro La Laguna

This report has been prepared to address the plastic industry’s claims that chemical recycling, also known as “advanced recycling,” can play a significant role in reducing global plastic pollution. The science and data currently available do not support this claim and actually point to the conclusion that chemical recycling would support expansion of plastic production, […]

Spring 2022 Planetary Health and the Humanities Conference Program Location: Texas A&M Hotel and Conference Center, Hullabaloo Room This event is free and open to all. Registration is required by March 27; please use this form. Information about travel, hotels, and the Bryan-College Station area can be found here.  Event Poster Speakers’ Abstracts and Bios

Domestic, or household-level, open burning of plastic waste is a source of air pollutants and greenhouse
gases that are often neglected in emission inventories. Domestic open burning is a considerable concern
in Guatemala due to the lack of access to waste collection services, particularly in rural areas. This paper
offers the first attempt to estimate emissions from the domestic open burning of waste at the city and
departmental levels in Guatemala. Data were collected from the Xalap´an region of Jalapa, Guatemala
and analyzed to determine the change in plastic waste generation over time as well as the
socioeconomic factors that may affect the extent of plastic waste generation and burning. The annual
per capita masses of plastic waste burned were used to estimate emissions from domestic open burning
of plastic waste in the region of Xalap´an, the cities of Jutiapa and Guatemala city, and all 22 departments
in Guatemala. Our results show that rural areas burn more waste domestically, likely because of a lack of
access to waste collection, and 30.4% of OC, 24.0% of BC, 23.6% of PM2.5, and 2.4% of CO2 emissions in
Guatemala may not be accounted for by excluding open plastic burning as a source.