The image of recycling was ever present in Panama City, Panama- in all different designs and combinations.  The big question I had was regarding their Organics cans that I kept seeing… are they actually composting?  Are they labeling cans like this with plans to compost on a large scale in the future?  I couldn’t tell.  Then you had this cut and dry example:

So does this mean that the inorganics can is single stream recycling, while the organics is composted?  Instead of any pictures or descriptions, a simple red “i” and green “o” are used.

I wasn’t able to get to the bottom of it while I was there, and I haven’t been able to find many clues elsewhere either.  It seems like exchanging recyclables for cash is available at a few recycling centers, but the city wasn’t really indicating that with that amount of litter there was.  Then again, the blatant culprit was plastics, which are by far the least valuable and the most responsible for environmental issues.

I hope they have a good material recovery plan on the back end that’s out of sight, because it was too beautiful of a country to turn into a pile of trash.  My observations in Bocas del Toro coming soon…