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BASF and GTZ joint project to manage waste separation in Mexican municipality |
01/08 |
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The project partners signing the cooperation (starting left: Dr. Günther Wehenpol, GTZ; Juvenal Hernandez Llanos , Mayor of Altamira; Michel Gaston Mertens, President Managing Director of BASF Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean) |
BASF operates one of its most important production sites for the NAFTA area in Altamira, a City at the Gulf of Mexico.
The Municipality of Altamira is located in a very important hydrologic region shaped by lagoons, rivers and swamps, making it difficult and costly to deposit adequately the 136 tons of waste generated daily by its 250.000 inhabitants and rendering this issue the most pressing environmental problem of the region.
In 2006, BASF Mexicana, the municipality of Altamira and the “Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ)” agreed to initiated a cooperation PPP (“Public Private Partnership”) whose main objective consisted in the elaboration of a program for improving the waste management. The President of BASF in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, Michel Gaston Mertens, the Lord Mayor of the City of Altamira, Juvenal Hernandez Llanos, and the former representative of GTZ, Dr. Günther Wehenpo signed the contract of the long-lasting project in 2006.
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The program was published in December of 2006 and in September of 2007, a new agreement between the parties was signed to guarantee its implementation. The company TLA (“Terminal de LNG de Altamira”), a joint venture between SHELL, TOTAL and Mitsui, that operates a huge regasification plant at the port of Altamira, has joined the agreement.
The first step in the implementation of the program is a pilot project with selected boroughs of Altamira. The selected population will be informed about the process of waste separation while at the same time, the municipality sets up the infrastructure to guarantee the right collection. The information campaign is essentially carried out by pupils of 2 schools who literarily visit every home of the neighborhood to contact the inhabitants.
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On November 27, 2007, the pilot project was launched with a formal event. The then Mayor of Altamira, Juvenal Hernandez Llanos, together with the mayor elect , Javier Gil, Michel Mertens, President of BASF in Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, Carlos Barajas, General Manager of TLA, ,and Axel Macht, Senior Consultant of GTZ, gave the green light.
"We at BASF Mexicana are very happy that all parties are starting to implement this important program and make improvements to the waste management a reality", said Michel Mertens in his address. "BASF lives with its neighbors, wants to contribute to the development of the communities and the improvement of their living conditions. We are also very glad to see that the implementation of this program gets so many young people involved", he added.
The participating pupils showed so much enthusiasm that they visited over 1300 homes in the 2 weeks following the launch.
On December 17, 2007 special trucks started to collect the separated waste.
The next stage will be to extend the project to the whole community based on the experiences of the pilot project.
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