{"id":131791,"date":"2026-06-04T01:01:37","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T07:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/a-garbage-crisis-engulfs-havana-as-fuel-shortages-stall-trash-pickup\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T01:01:37","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T07:01:37","slug":"a-garbage-crisis-engulfs-havana-as-fuel-shortages-stall-trash-pickup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/a-garbage-crisis-engulfs-havana-as-fuel-shortages-stall-trash-pickup\/","title":{"rendered":"A garbage crisis engulfs Havana as fuel shortages stall trash pickup"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A man searches through a pile of trash for items to salvage in Havana, Cuba, Monday, June 1, 2026. (AP Photo\/Ramon Espinosa)<\/span>(AP Photo\/Ramon Espinosa)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

HAVANA (AP) \u2014 On a recent afternoon in Cuba, the temperature climbed and anxiety grew among the residents of a Havana<\/a> street.<\/p>\n

Their focus was an improvised dump site on the sidewalk with rotting food scraps, torn bags, cardboard and rubble. Swarms of flies and stray cats gathered around the trash whose stench wafted on the breeze from the nearby sea.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat you\u2019re looking at is depressing,\u201d lamented Mar\u00eda Odalys Ram\u00edrez, a 63-year-old who lives across the street from the capital’s iconic Hermanos Ameijeiras hospital. \u201cThe trash in this area, the flies, the rats, the filth \u2014 it\u2019s completely unsanitary.\u201d<\/p>\n

For months, residents of Havana \u2014 home to 2 million of Cuba\u2019s almost 10 million residents \u2014 have lived with piles of garbage accumulating on almost every street corner. The situation deteriorated after a U.S. energy blockade<\/a> triggered power outages<\/a>, water shortages and a fuel crisis that brought state-run garbage trucks to a standstill.<\/p>\n

Without garbage collection, residents have begun burning waste in the streets, raising alarm among health officials over potentially toxic smoke.<\/p>\n

Residents fear the coming months will bring worse conditions as summer heat intensifies and hurricane season begins.<\/p>\n

A citywide tour by The Associated Press revealed identical scenes across Havana neighborhoods where locals said garbage trucks pass only irregularly.<\/p>\n

In the city center and on the outskirts, cars, bicycles and pedestrians weave around the trash piles. Others pick through it, hoping to salvage something useful.<\/p>\n

Havana as of last July was producing the equivalent of about 12 Olympic-sized swimming pools of solid waste every day, according the latest municipal figures available. Even then, municipal services collected just 57%.<\/p>\n

The \u201cimproper management of urban solid waste\u201d has been identified as a primary environmental challenge in Cuba’s national strategy, said Odalys Goicochea, an official at the ministry of science, technology and the environment.<\/p>\n

Now, Goicochea warned, the current garbage collection situation, combined with rising temperatures and impending rains, could worsen the situation. The heat and moisture threaten to trigger a proliferation of disease-carrying flies and mosquitoes.<\/p>\n

The crisis has sparked citizen initiatives to clean up neighborhoods.<\/p>\n

One is El Batazo, an initiative operating across eight Havana blocks. A collector rings a bell twice daily to pick up pre-sorted household trash, while other project members sweep the streets.<\/p>\n

Members then sell recyclable raw materials like aluminum and glass, repurpose food scraps to feed livestock and place the remaining trash into a container for later transport to a landfill.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fundamental impact of this project is proving to the community that it can be done,\u201d said Evelyn Mart\u00ednez, a collaborator at El Batazo. \u201cIt is entirely possible to live in a cleaner environment, give value to what we call \u2018trash’ and put it to good use.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Follow AP\u2019s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/latin-america<\/a><\/p>\n

\"A
A bicycle taxi driver waits for customers, next to a pile of trash in Havana, Cuba, Monday, June 1, 2026. (AP Photo\/Ramon Espinosa)<\/span>(AP Photo\/Ramon Espinosa)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A man searches through a pile of trash for items to salvage in Havana, Cuba, Monday, June 1, 2026. (AP Photo\/Ramon Espinosa)(AP Photo\/Ramon Espinosa) HAVANA (AP) \u2014 On a recent afternoon in Cuba, the temperature climbed and anxiety grew among the residents of a Havana street. Their focus was an improvised dump site on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":131792,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5734],"tags":[],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-131791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-associated-press"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131791"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131791\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131791"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=131791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}