Five years ago, Frigorífico Guadalupe slaughterhouse dumped 5.5 tons of animal waste in Bogotá’s municipal landfill and into the Bogotá River. Stomach fluids from cattle and pigs containing disease-producing bacteria flowed into the river’s mélange of other contaminants. Animal feces fouled the Bogotá’s banks. But Colombia’s largest slaughterhouse has changed its ways as part of a promising new conservation movement involving municipal and corporate collaboration. A $500,000 wastewater treatment plant is up and running, and composting converts 90% of the company’s solid waste into fertilizer for sale to flower and potato growers. While insisting that the pollution reductions came as a result of their own initiative, company executives credit a more sophisticated and cooperative approach by city environmental authorities in improving Bogotá’s embattled ecosystems... [Log in to read more]