(Right-side video footage provided by tijuanapress.com . For more video and extended imagery, visit tijuanaproject.org .)
In Tijuana, a new machine is poised to help clean up some of the city’s social and environmental problems. A Tijuana teenager dreamed up the contraption ten years ago. She’s since dedicated her life to making the project a reality. KPBS Border Reporter Amy Isackson has the story.
As a teenager, growing up in Tijuana, Miroslava Enciso Limon always wanted to be a firefighter. But her dream changed when her high school teacher assigned her to visit Tijuana’s dump.
Enciso: My name was picked for the dump. I was like, ohhhhh, they picked me for that.
Enciso knew that families lived at the dump in houses they made out of trash. They wore clothes from the trash. They lived by reselling any scraps they could find. She says it was gross.
Enciso: (translated) But once you get there, it hits you. To see how people live, to see a kid eating garbage, to say to a kid, what’s your dream, and they say a shower, to feel what it’s like to have hot water fall on you.
Enciso says after the field trip she didn’t sleep for two days. A year later, she announced to her dad that she was going to build a machine to sort trash so people wouldn’t have to.
Enciso (translated): It was a radical life change.
Enciso enrolled at Tijuana’s Institute of Technology and got a degree in industrial engineering. During her last year, she designed the recycling machine. She knew it would never make it off the drawing board without backing from the city.
Last year, with her plans in hand, Enciso began dogging candidates in the city’s mayoral election. One of those candidates, and the eventual victor, was Jorge Ramos. He remembers meeting Enciso.
Ramos: She was in a taxi blowing her horn to my bus. So we stopped and she got in.
He told her she could have five minutes of his time.
Ramos: I was very impressed and gave her the phone of my house so that when I win she could look for me. And she did. And now, it is a reality.
City dump trucks back up to Enciso’s recycling machine. It’s up and running at a facility on Tijuana’s east side. The machine is not especially high tech.
Blades rip open the garbage bags and spill the contents onto a conveyor belt. At times, the stench makes your eyes water.
About thirty workers dressed in navy coveralls, face masks and latex gloves sort the trash. All of them used to be scavengers at the dump. New employee, Luisa Marquez says it was much harder when she was a scavenger.
Marquez (translated): Before, I left at 4 a.m, before the sun came up because it’d get too hot….We’d have to open the bags. We’d get dirty. We’d get covered in food. We didn’t have uniforms. We didn’t have protection or a roof.
The machine’s inventor, Enciso, says she could have automated the process more. But the idea is to employ as many scavengers from the dump as possible -- about 200 when the machine is fully operational.
They earn about $105 a week plus benefits. Marquez says there are other perks, too.
Marquez (translated): I find a lot of things, like clothes. We wash it with Clorox and wear it. The shoes, too. These shoes I’m wearing, I found here.
City officials eventually hope to recycle 60-percent of Tijuana’s trash.
Meanwhile, Enciso says the most difficult thing about the project has been that she’s barely seen her two children in the last four months. But she tells them her work is not only helping people but the environment.
Enciso (translated) I took my son to the dump so he could see how people lived. To show him, this project is for them. And for you. So your life is better tomorrow and so you have air and water to live.
She says her kids are now on board. In fact, her son yells at their family to turn off the lights.
Amy Isackson, KPBS News.
