The citizens of today are accustomed to use and discard the things that we believe are of no use, ignoring the great damages to the environment that we generate by not recycling.

That is why San Miguel Industrias (SMI), a company that practices the recycling of PET bottles for the development of new packaging, shares six data on the waste we discard daily.

According to data from the Environmental Information System (Sinia), each citizen in Lima would produce 0.8 kilograms of daily garbage, which in sum would be 8,468 tons per day. This amount is equivalent to filling the National Stadium (Lima, Peru) with garbage.

That is, our city represents 45% of the total 23,000 tons of waste that are generated in the country. Of this, 80% is thrown in the four authorized sanitary landfills that exist in the city; while the remaining 20% ​​goes to the landfills on the outskirts of the city and to the rivers that flow into the sea.

According to the General Law on Solid Waste, the communes are committed to manage and treat solid wastes, sanitary and environmentally friendly wastes. In Lima, all municipalities outsource the service to one of the 457 companies accredited by the General Direction of Environmental Health (Digesa).

In Lima, 70% of the neighbors do not pay for the garbage collection service, and there are high trends of delinquency in the payment of taxes. This would explain the little investment made by municipalities in segregating solid waste.

According to data from the NGO Ciudad Saludable, 55% of solid waste is organic matter, and 29% is usable (paper, cardboard, plastic, etc.). However, in a lot of cases, this useable material ends up polluting the sea.

In our country, the recycling of solid waste, especially plastic, has become a business. According to the Ministry of Labor and Employment Promotion, it is estimated that there are more than 108 thousand recycling families in Peru; Which are established in different organizations in the city.

About SMI
San Miguel Industrias, part of the Intercorp group, is an organization committed to protecting the environment that supplies plastic bottles and bottles to about 85% of the Peruvian market for beverages and liquid contents. SMI has two last generation recycling plants in Peru and Colombia.

SMI is responsible for recycling plastic bottles to convert them back into this packaging, thus contributing to the environment. The process of bottle-to-bottle recycling is what differentiates this company from the rest of the industry.

Source: SMI
Lima, Peru
21th Edition