Desperate due to the lack of trucks, neighbors set the garbage on fire
14ymedio, Dario Hernandez, Havana, February 16, 2026 – – Just as mountains of garbage have proliferated on every corner of Havana in recent months, so too has the illegal burning of it. At dawn or dusk, day or night, neighbors set fire to the trash without any restraint. Smoke over the capital and black wisps falling like negatives of snowflakes are becoming commonplace, with the consequent health risks.
“I don’t think people are aware of how dangerous burning solid waste is,” says a nurse who lives in Central Havana. “But they don’t have any other choice. There are garbage dumps burning next to houses, parks, sports fields, everywhere.”
Another Havana resident from Guanabacoa told 14ymedio that on Saturday, returning home at night, he saw a curtain of smoke along his entire route on Vía Blanca. “At certain times of the day, the smell of burning is constant,” he said. Not only in his municipality, he explained, but throughout the city, burning trash “is now a widespread practice because the garbage trucks are delayed or simply don’t come at all.”
“The smell of burning is better than the stench of all that filth,” asserts a resident of Plaza de la Revolución. There’s no other way, she says, to light a fire to get rid of the flies.
From her tall building, she sees what she calls a “Sauron’s ring of waste,” referring to the villain from The Lord of the Rings: distinct garbage dumps that, due to a lack of trucks to collect them because of the critical fuel shortage—exacerbated by the US oil embargo in force since early January—have merged together. “The one that runs from Factor and Conill joins the one at Estancia and Conill, which in turn joins the one at Santa Ana and Estancia, which completes the circle with the one at Factor and Santa Ana,” she lists, lamenting that since the temperatures have begun to rise, the smell is unbearable. Ironically alluding to the plot of J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel, she concludes: “One ring to choke them all.”
Two weeks ago, the official newspaper Cubadebate published a report highlighting some figures on the collapse of waste collection: Havana has 10,000 garbage containers but needs between 20,000 and 30,000, and only between 16,000 and 17,000 cubic meters are being collected daily, whereas in the past between 25,000 and 30,000 cubic meters were collected.
One of the main problems, the media outlet said, quoting officials, is not only the lack of fuel but also the poor condition of the equipment: of 106 collection trucks, only 44 are working. “We are between 37% and 44% technical availability, well below what is needed,” acknowledged Alexis González Inclán, an official from Municipal Services.
Another drawback is the lack of labor. There is little interest in being a street sweeper because the basic salary they received, which a few years ago was attractive, today, according to González Inclán, “is little more than 2,000 pesos,” while a carton of 30 eggs costs between 2,000 and 3,000 pesos or a pound of rice costs 300 pesos on the informal market.
In a meeting on the issue, President Miguel Díaz-Canel criticized his officials for not acting more quickly before the problem reached its current levels. The Havana government presented 49 measures to address the accumulated garbage piles, but so far, none have been implemented, either on paper or in practice.
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