La Paz revolutionizes its garbage collection with new Transfer Plant; capacity will double

The garbage collection system in La Paz, Baja California Sur, will undergo a fundamental transformation with the launch of the first Waste Transfer Plant. This strategic project, announced by Mayor Milena Quiroga, is designed to reorganize the management of the more than 400 tons of waste generated by the city daily and to solve efficiency problems.

This project comes at a crucial moment, as the collection service had faced significant challenges. These included route delays, service saturation, and, above all, excessively long trips by collection trucks to the sanitary landfill, which affected overall efficiency and delayed passage through neighborhoods.

The central problem of the current system lies in the final disposal logistics. Collection trucks, after filling their load in the neighborhoods, must travel directly to the sanitary landfill. This journey involves a considerable expenditure of time, fuel, and accelerated wear and tear on the units, in addition to reducing their capacity to serve other areas with high demand.

The new transfer station, originally announced in October and now under development, will function as a centralized intermediate point. The plant will be strategically located within the city, at the Public Services facilities. Its function will be to receive waste from the small collection trucks, eliminating the need for them to make the long journey.

The new operational model will be much more agile. Standard collection trucks, instead of wasting hours on the transfer, will unload their contents at the new plant. This process will be quick, allowing them to return to their assigned routes in a fraction of the time it previously took, optimizing their work shifts.

Once at the plant, the waste deposited by the small trucks will be handled by specialized machinery. The garbage will go through a hydraulic press that will compact large volumes of waste. This step is crucial for maximizing the amount of trash that can be transported in each trip to the landfill.

After compaction, the waste will be loaded onto much larger vehicles, such as gondolas or semi-trucks. These specialized vehicles will be the only ones making the long journey from the transfer plant to the final disposal site. In this way, each trip to the landfill is made with a much larger load.

The most tangible benefit of this new logistic is the time savings. A trip that used to take a collection truck about two hours (round trip to the landfill) will now be reduced to a 15 or 20-minute cycle (round trip to the transfer plant). This will allow each unit to make two or three trips per shift, instead of just one.

This increase in operational efficiency will, according to projections, double the collection capacity throughout the city. The goal is clear: to improve response times, cover one hundred percent of the routes consistently, and reduce the daily mileage and wear and tear on each collection unit.

This modernization of the municipal system is complemented by other investments. In early 2025, the City Council acquired 15 new collection trucks and a street sweeper. Additionally, GPS technology was implemented in the fleet's 28 trucks to monitor routes in real-time and eliminate downtime.

The administration has also worked on rehabilitating final disposal sites in rural communities. More than 910,000 square meters were serviced in Todos Santos, El Carrizal, San Pedro, and El Triunfo, in order to recover operational capacity and reduce environmental impacts in the area.

Finally, this change in waste logistics is in addition to other reorganization actions in public services. The incorporation of women into the operation of collection trucks and into leadership roles in the Transit Directorate has been highlighted, as part of a comprehensive management model for the state capital.