During the 1990s, the dump was formed and spread over an area of six or seven hectares. More than half of it has already been recovered, with a forest containing some 3,000 trees, nurseries for seedlings to continue reforesting, and places for processing wastes or preparing organic fertilizer.

There is a workforce of 35, nine of whom are women. In the Ecological Processing Center for Solid Urban Waste, nothing is wasted. Everything is put to some use. An average of 150 to 160 cubic meters of urban waste arrive every day from neighborhoods on the outskirts of Guantanamo.

The first job is to separate organic waste from inorganic materials, which is then classified by lots, such as X-ray film, shoe soles, perfume or nail polish containers, toothpaste tubes, cardboard, paper, tinplate, car tires, radios, TV sets and a great deal of plastic waste. Much is sold off a recycled raw materials; the rest the people use for themselves. Further income is derived from the sale of organic compost, but the price is five or six times lower than the real cost of production.

The Ecological Processing Center for Solid Urban Waste “will only be sustainable once an environmental economic study has been carried out. Our work is being recognized, but no one has sat down to do the sums,” Ms. Martínez said.

The waste project has had a striking impact: Burning of rubbish is now minimal, the proliferation of insects harmful to human health has been curbed, forests have begun to recover and degraded ecosystems are being protected and rebuilt. The ecological center receives an estimated one ton a month of high- and low-density plastic waste. Instead of being burned, as it used to be, it is reused in various ways.

Experts say this practice has eliminated the release of toxic gases. The reduction represents a 6 percent drop in the province’s total emissions of persistent organic pollutants such as dioxins and furans into the atmosphere.

The ecological center is one of the foremost projects supported by the Global Environment Facility’s Small Grants Program, managed in Cuba by the United Nations Development Fund.

According to estimates from the Small Grants Program and other investigations, the project successfully reforested three hectares of land and grew some 1,000 seedlings a year. Forty households in the community participated in the reforestation effort.

Waste decomposition time was halved, production of organic compost increased by 60 tons, the uncontrolled burning of 150 tons of rubbish a month was eliminated, and new jobs and better working conditions were established.

Ms. Martínez said that organizing groups such as the ecological center in every Cuban province could be a method for providing training for personnel at other rubbish dumps, in order to reproduce their successful experience. “If the funding for such a nationwide project is not forthcoming, at least we could set up groups for the eastern, western and central regions of the country,” she said.

The 20 or so large rubbish dumps in Guantanamo province are now trying to put the ecological processing center’s techniques into practice.