Mexico City Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum has promoted a variety of green initiatives, one of which—a law curbing single-use plastic products—has driven a transition to reusable shopping bags. (Photos courtesy of Mexico City government)
For decades, widespread littering and air contamination have bedeviled greater Mexico City, the western hemisphere’s second largest metropolitan area behind São Paulo, Brazil. But hopes are high that progress is being made on both fronts thanks in part to the federal capital’s new mayor, Claudia Sheinbaum, a sustainable-development scholar and former member of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Since taking office on Dec. 1, 2018, Sheinbaum has launched an array of initiatives aimed at reducing the environmental footprint of Mexico’s national capital, with measures to rein in plastic trash and bolster solar power prominent among them. On Jan. 1, the federal district of Mexico City—the nine-million-resident jurisdiction Sheinbaum presides over—banned single-use plastic bags at all points of sale throughout the city. The ban, part of a larger plastic-waste bill approved in May by the Mexico City Congress, the federal capital’s legislative... [Log in to read more]
