A landfill near Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s Guanabara Bay has been turned into mangroves, boosting the local flora and fauna.
One of Latin America’s largest landfills contained a portion of the 600,000 square meters that were salvaged.
Around 80 million tonnes of waste were dumped at the Jardim Gramacho dump between the early 1970s and 2012, contaminating the Guanabara Bay’s land and seas.
Since the landfill was deactivated 11 years ago, Rio’s Municipal Cleaning enterprise and a private enterprise have worked together to transform the region into a green space.
The project now spans 60 hectares, up from the initial 10 hectares of mangrove plantation. It is the bay’s largest mangrove region.
Mangrove plants are the most suitable for use in environmental restoration, due to their impressive ability to store so-called “blue carbon”, a term used to refer to the carbon of marine and coastal ecosystems, in contrast to the “green carbon” associated with forest and other terrestrial ecosystems.
According to estimates from a study published in early 2022, one hectare of mangrove can store between two and four times more carbon than the same hectare of another biome – including the Amazon rainforest.
The restored mangroves in Guanabara Bay are also helping in the recovery of both flora and fauna, with species of crabs, birds and fish now populating the area.
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