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Green should be the color that identifies Guatemala more than any other. When you’re flying into Guatemala you know you have arrived when your see the green vegetation and the volcanic chain that crosses the country from border to border. Just look at all the different shades of green found at a simple entrance for a coffee plantation, just outside Antigua Guatemala.

Although I live next to a coffee plantation, often, I wish I could live inside a coffee plantation, don’t you?

Water heaters is another important area in Guatemala where one can bring clear energy and help the environment and the economy. That is because most water heaters are electric in Guatemala; either electric shower heads (the most) or inline electric heaters. Either way, water heaters probably consumed the most electricity of all the electro-domestic appliances. The worst part is that Guatemala produces its electricity through fossil fuels like bunker, coal (carbon) and diesel. I say the worst part because Guatemala has tremendous amounts of natural resources to produce cleaner electricity.

So Alejandro del Valle has partnered Biopersa with Kioto to distribute solar water heaters like the one shown in the picture above. Solar water heaters work especially well in Guatemala because of the sun light we received year round, even in the rainy season.

Let’s hope more people and businesses begin replacing their electric heaters with solar water heaters. If you had the choice and enough sun light through out the year, would you install a solar water heater?

This is what I shared with you before about the Antigua’s Biodiesel Project:

Antigua Guatemala is full of Quixotes who do not know about impossibles. Alejandro del Valle is such a Quixote who after careful consideration decided to take on the gigantic enterprise to convert the burnt cooking oil from all those restaurants around La Antigua Guatemala and Guatemala City into renewal biodiesel energy to be used in the Antigua’s City Hall vehicles and the Obras Sociales del Hermano Pedro Hospital.

Come on, if after reading the above paragraph you don’t think you have to be a Quixote to take on such monumental project, just imagine for a second how many people you have to convince of the idea that converting burnt oil into biodiesel for the municipal vehicle fleet is feasible; never mind the ecological benefits. Come on, we are talking about business owners, Antigua’s Mayor and the City Council, investors and a long list of people throughout Guatemala and abroad. Alejandro del Valle and his supportive team did that.

The Antigua’s Biodiesel Project is something I believe in with all of my heart and I will come back to this project to highlight its merits and achievements as well as to show you the story behind the scenes…

Since that article was published, a few things have changed. Biopersa no longer provides biodiesel for La Antigua Guatemala’s municipal vehicles because someone in City Hall decided that biodiesel would damage the engines. However, as you saw yesterday, not only Biopersa, the company behind, the Biodiesel and other renewal energy projects, is still very much involved in ecological energy projects, recycling and the protection of the environment. Now they are selling their biodiesel the other companies, large and small.

Also, they are now converting chicken fat junk or trash into biodiesel. Thus, turning a ecological problem of contamination into renewal energy. Biopersa is becoming a distributor of solar powered water heaters to take advantage of the tremendous amount of sun shine we receive in Guatemala all year long. There’s plenty more, but I will only cover a few more things.

If you’re interested in learning the process of turning burnt oil and chicken fat into biodiesel, let me know I will update this entry with the basic steps that I learned the other day.

Recycling the recycling truck of La Antigua Guatemala. Keep reading and I promise the previous sentence will make sense.

My dear green friend Kara Andrade had this to say about recycling in La Antigua Guatemala:

For weeks I’ve been asking different people about recycling centers, pickup services, anything to stop the madness of the trash we’ve been generating in our house for the past two months. Everyone’s says “Oh yeah, La Antigua recycles.” or “Have you tried that place in Ciudad Vieja?” “The capital has a few places, go there.” All so vague and unhelpful that it made me question whether  it was sheer urban legend.

… I looked in the yellow pages, I tweeted, I asked other “greensters,” but nothing satiated my need for convenience, conservation and practicality.  So I spent a few hours on Facebook looking for Facebook groups with the keyword “Guatemala” in them and poured through 500 pages until I found these folks:

Guatemala Green: How it Works

We called and spoke to Pedro Morales  Tel: 5104 8447 (there’s also an English speaker – Becky Harris (English Speaking)  Tel: 5778 4009) and scheduled a regular pick-up from our home on Tuesdays. We neede  to improve our sorting/storing methodology, per their requirements, but an hour of sorting, washing out and rearranging everything did the trick. We got some neighbors in on it and they brought their recyclables over. (Continue reading… It’s worth every penny)

Of course, being a wholehearted greenster, Kara Andrade went the extra mile and organized a colonia recycling program in her neighborhood and even created two flyers; Recycling at El Calvario in English and Reciclaje en El Calvario. Below her one paragraph summary about the recycling program at her colonia (residential neighborhood):

What is Guatemala Green Recycling?
Guatemala Green is a recycling program that picks up already sorted materials for recycling in the La Antigua area. The centre is based in “El Tigre” next to Mastil on the road out of La Antigua towards Ciudad Vieja.

¿Que es Guatemala Green Recycling?
Guatemala Green es un programa de reciclaje que recoge los materials que ya están ordenados para el reciclaje en la zona de La Antigua. El centro se basa en “El Tigre” junto al Mástil en la carretera de La Antigua a Ciudad Vieja.

What my green thumb friend Kara Andrade didn’t mention was the fact that the vehicle used for the recycling pick up belongs to Biopersa, Antigua’s Biodiesel Project. Biopersa and Guatemala Green joined their resources to create the first viable recycling program in Antigua Guatemala. The biodiesel truck main purpose is to pick up restaurants’ burnt oil and other liquid fats which are then converted into biodiesel. The biodiesel truck, of course, runs on biodiesel and now is used for the recycling program as well.

That’s what I call 100% ecological recycling program!

I’m inspired by people like Kara Andrade from HablaGuate and Alejandro del Valle, the Quixote behind the Antigua’s Biodiesel Project and their team members. When I grow up, I want to be like them!

How does it work the recycling program where you live?