Hope for Brazil's polluted Guanabara Bay

Guanabara Bay is one of Rio de Janeiro's most recognizable images, and one of the most beautiful places on Earth — or it should be. The surrounding landscape is at risk from unregulated urban sprawl in the city of around 6.7 million, and the sea is heavily polluted. Garbage, toxic chemicals and sewage are routinely discharged into the Atlantic — half of which goes untreated.

Guanabara Bay, dotted with more than 100 islands, measures almost 400 square kilometers (about 150 square miles). The coast is lined with 44 beaches, but many people avoid them nowadays because so much garbage washes up along the shore. Bits of plastic, diapers, clothes, tires, furniture: Every day, around 100 tons of garbage is dumped into the bay.

But, in the near future, this man may no longer have to recycle the floating garbage. Last November, Rio authorities privatized wastewater disposal in the area and sold the license to the company Aguas do Rio. The new operator has promised to invest a total of 24 billion reals (around €4.7 billion/$5.2 billion) in order to do what no one has managed to date: clean up Guanabara Bay.

"I have no doubt people will start swimming again in the bay," the head of Aguas do Rio, Alexandre Bianchini, recently told news agency AFP. Locals, however, are skeptical. There have been several plans to save the bay in the past, none of which ever amounted to anything. A restructuring plan for wastewater treatment facilities was launched as far back as 1994, but the pipes were never laid.

In the run-up to the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, the city allocated around $1 billion to clean up the bay. But a few days before the Games, the city declared insolvency. The promise to increase the wastewater treatment rate to 80% was not fulfilled.

So far, only one — unplanned — event has brought any relief. When Rio de Janeiro went into lockdown because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Guanabara Bay began to recover, as is apparent from this photo taken in May 2020. Even creatures like sea turtles, which had long avoided the dirty water, returned to the deserted beaches.

Gilciney Lopes Gomes used to be a fisherman. Now he collects trash, as seen here, from a river that empties into Guanabara Bay. Gomes lives near the Jardim Gramacho garbage dump, on the edge of the bay. Once the biggest open-air landfill in Latin America, it was officially closed in 2012. But environmentalists have warned that toxic mud from the dump still seeps into the water.

Rio also has many illegal dumps, like this one. This dump is located near one of the 35 rivers that flow into Guanabara Bay. Big chemical and oil companies have factories nearby, and fishers and environmentalists say toxic industrial waste from these sites also ends up in the water.

"Am I supposed to feed this to my family?" asks Gomes, holding up two plastic bottles full of medical waste. The former fisher, a father of four, says there are no longer enough fish and crustaceans in his part of the bay to ensure his livelihood. Now, at the age of 61, he collects and sells recyclable garbage. Gomes first started working as a 9-year-old boy digging garbage at the dump.

Biologist Mario Moscatelli describes Guanabara Bay as "a microcosm of how environmental problems are managed in Brazil." Nonetheless, he told AFP that he's ready to give Aguas do Rio a chance: "We gave the state 50 years to make this mess. We can give the company five."