Last Saturday we were part of a massive beach clean up in Mahahual.  GVI Mexico office staff together with some Dive Master interns and other local and international organizations participated in a beach clean up organized by Sustenta, a Mexican organization that promotes sustainable development and green technologies. The event started on Friday with a Mayan blessing, 4 working tables in which problems and solutions towards a more sustainable Mahahual were discussed and a presentation of three very interesting documentaries. 

On Saturday about 300 people participated and collected  555 bags of trash and 427 bags of plastic bottles. A total of 6437 kg just from the beach in Mahahual!! Can you imagine how much work there is still to do in the whole Region?

We started our collaboration with Sustenta  three years ago and we set up a Fund raising campaign to collect money to buy water filters that families from the community would get in exchange of plastic bottles collected. This was done with the aim of reducing the use of platic bottles with the use of filters to have drinkable water. In two years we raised more than 2500 USD which was enough to buy  filters that were given to the families that won the beach clean contesst.

There were different categories ie. individual, families/groups that collect plastic bottles during a week and families/groups that collected it on Saturday. It was a very emotive event having seen the town more and tourists more involved in creating solutions and decreasing trash creation.