Video: This is how they clean Rio de Janeiro and Baltimore Inner Harbor from trash

[Simon]

 

And in Brazil they use ten of these conveyor belt boats in the Rio de Janeiro bay to collect 15 tons of garbage from the water - every single day. But despite this, Brazil won't make its own "clean water" targets that it set up ahead of the Olympics.

 

"Brazil will not make good on its commitment to clean up Rio de Janeiro's sewage-filled Guanabara Bay by the 2016 Olympic Games, state environmental officials acknowledged [...]

Authorities pledged to cut by 80 percent the flow of pollution into Guanabara Bay by the 2016 Games through the expansion of the sewage network and the construction of River Treatment Units, or RTUs, built at the mouths of rivers flowing into the bay. The facilities would filter out much of the sewage and trash.

But little progress has been made on either front, and with just over two years to go until the Olympics, nearly 70 percent of the sewage in the metropolitan area of 12 million inhabitants continues to flow untreated, along with thousands of tons of garbage daily, into area rivers, the bay and even Rio's famed beaches like Copacabana and Ipanema."

Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/2014/05/17/3200014/rio-official-water-pollution-targets.html

[May102014]

Brazil has been a hotbed for controversy over the last few weeks. Actually, controversy and Brazil have been working together for more than a few weeks. I read a lot of world news and I can go down the line of issues plaguing this country. There's no excuse in the world for government officials in Brazil to drag their feet in cleaning up Rio de Janeiro's sewage in Guanabara Bay. None. This country is hosting the 2016 Summer Olympic Games AND are currently the host of the World Cup. With all this money coming into this country how can government officials neglect this issue? Are they going to wait until the last minute or somehow direct tourists and cameras away from this area? It's not hard to do and yet I can't comprehend the reasoning on why this is being ignored. It doesn't make much sense, but yet when I think of environmental atrocities (along with human rights issues) in Brazil I can't allow myself to become too shock at the current situation.