11.06.2025
For clean coasts and healthy oceans: local approaches to combating plastic pollution in Mexico
GIZ protects Mexico’s coastlines from plastic pollution, benefiting local communities, marine life, and tourism.
Mexico’s beaches are a popular destination for tourists from all over the world. However, the people in the region face a serious challenge: plastic waste and microplastics are contaminating beaches, coastal lagoons, mangrove forests and salt marshes. This threatens the unique ecosystems and affects large numbers of marine animals. In the long term this also impacts the livelihoods of many local people.
The Pacific coasts of the federal state of Oaxaca are particularly exposed. The region lacks adequate facilities for processing or recycling the waste that is produced. There alone, around two tonnes of plastic enter the marine environment every day. In Mexico as a whole, plastic makes up about one fifth of total waste. Its share in Oaxaca is more than one quarter.
Measurable results for people and nature
To avoid plastic entering the sea in the first place, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH is taking measures directly at source. A project it is implementing on behalf of the German Environment Ministry shows how local economic cooperation and international engagement can together achieve a reduction in waste. With success: the project’s measures are already having an impact. In the participating municipalities, joint activities are generating new strategies for a functioning circular economy.
Policy-makers and the private sector involved at local level
The tourism and food-and-drink industries are particularly large contributors to the strain on the coastal regions. The Less Plastic Guide has been developed to counteract this. It sets out specific alternatives to single-use products and is designed to raise awareness of better ways to deal with plastic. As Lizeth Rojas Ruiz, managing director and owner of the Casa Losodeli Hotel in Oaxaca, explains, ‘For us, the first step was to understand how we can reduce plastic most effectively. Now we can consult the Less Plastic Guide for specific solutions.’
At policy-making level, the project is involved in designing the national strategy for a circular economy as well as measures to limit the amount of plastic entering the oceans. Policy-makers, the private sector and wider society are thus combining their strengths in the interests of protecting the beaches and easing the pressure on the oceans.