▲ With recycling actions, we are on the right side of history, businessmen pointed out to the head of Semarnat. In the image, PetStar plant in Edomex.Photo Yazmin Ortega
Carolina Gomez Mena
Sent
La Jornada Newspaper
Thursday, November 27, 2025, p. 11
Toluca, Méx., Mexico generates 120 thousand tons of waste daily; “We cannot continue like this, we must ensure that this garbage becomes a resource,” said Alicia Bárcena Ibarra, head of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat), who highlighted the importance of there being a General Law of Circular Economy, and that “it is not a dead letter.”
At the inauguration of the expansion of the PetStar recycler, a business initiative in which Arca Continental and Coca-Cola México, among others, participate, he explained that the standard seeks to “establish clear rules, promote more efficient technologies and accompany companies in the transition to more responsible and competitive production models.”
He explained that the law, which was recently presented to the Chamber of Deputies, proposes establishing a national system of circular economy and instruments “to advance and agree on this extended responsibility of the producer; that gradually achieve that producers and importers take responsibility for the impact of the goods they place on the market, from their origin to their reintegration into the productive chains.”
Achieving the above, he explained, is a “leap” that will even affect international negotiations in the field. “In addition, this law indicates the possibility of us making concertation agreements for differentiated goals according to what each company can achieve, the technical capabilities, the financial situation and with the objective that everyone remains within this transition of circularity.”
Likewise, “it proposes voluntary audits coordinated by Profepa (Federal Attorney for Environmental Protection) to advance, correct and strengthen the markets for secondary raw materials that are so required to strengthen circularity in Mexico.”
Bárcena ruled out that the legislation attempts to “make up or hide pollution,” as civil society groups propose. Before business executives, including Alejandro Malagón, president of the Confederation of Industrial Chambers, he celebrated the “active support” of businessmen in the construction of the law, which was “crucial.”
He demanded “go much faster” to the circular economy, and highlighted that the 100 percent Mexican PetStar plant “is a tangible example of how we can avoid new plastic in the world, which means that its recycled bottles can have infinite lives and be transformed many times into new packaging.”
He pointed out that it will be a long transformation process towards the circular economy, “but it cannot be postponed; it must be built with all sectors. Poles of development of circular economy for Well-being are being created.”
He highlighted that it is expected that in the future there will be “circular economy industrial centers or parks, where circularity even occurs among the companies that participate within the park.”
The federal government also plans the creation of 10 recycling plants in the country, for which it seeks to install “the first circular economy park in Hidalgo”, for which a public consultation will be held on December 14 with the Hidalgo communities.
Patricio Caso, vice president of Public Affairs and Sustainability at Coca-Cola Mexico, assured that with actions in favor of recycling we are on the right side of history, and Malagón said that the PET recycling plant (the largest in the world) is an “exemplary case of circular economy and environmental commitment with social impact.”
