As the municipality's environment councillor, she's written educational pamphlets on responsible waste handling — one for Indigenous vendors at the market, another for schoolchildren. The school version landed well. The market version mostly didn't, hampered less by disinterest than by widespread illiteracy among the vendors it was meant to reach.
A garbage-collecting van, bought specifically for the market, briefly looked like real progress. She went herself to explain how it worked, people began sorting and separating their waste, and then the municipality quietly redirected the van elsewhere. The credibility that move cost her at the market, she suspects, may never fully come back.
By doing so, the municipality probably ruined their credibility at the market forever.
Saturdays are the worst for waste — not from tourists directly, but from the market vendors whose presence tourism indirectly sustains. She's trying to organise a campaign against the resulting litter, again without much municipal backing. Her environment council, as far as she can tell, exists mainly to project the appearance of environmental concern; its actual budget is effectively nothing, and she funds her own activities by borrowing small amounts from other departments — photocopies, the occasional book.
Backpackers draw a particular frustration from her. Trying to travel as cheaply as possible, sometimes camping outright, they light fires and leave mess behind, competing directly with locals for resources like firewood. She'd rather see them better informed about the consequences of stretching a budget that thin in a place that has to live with the aftermath.
The municipality currently employs ten garbage collectors. She'd rather see that money spent on information campaigns instead — treating the cause, she argues, rather than endlessly mopping up the symptom. And she'd like to see organised eco-tourism take root in Otavalo, beyond the individual backpacker circuit, since visitors who stay longer tend to spend more, and spend it more widely.
“Tourists should inform themselves in Quito,” she says, “about how to travel to Otavalo responsibly, before they ever arrive.”