Cancún launches a three-year Zero Waste Destination plan transforming hotels and beaches through recycling, refill stations, and eco-tourism.
Cancún has embarked on an ambitious three-year “Zero Waste Destination” program designed to overhaul how the destination Mexican city manages trash, plastics, and recycling across hotels, beaches, and visitor touchpoints.
“Today, Cancún becomes the first tourist destination in Mexico to join the UN Tourism Global Initiative on Tourism and Plastics,” Cancún Mayor Ana Paty Peralta said in a statement. “Zero Waste Destination Cancún represents the new vision of tourism we are building together with our governor, Mara Lezama: more conscious, fairer, and truly sustainable, generating well-being today without jeopardizing tomorrow,” she said.
According to the announcement, the first phase will involve 89 hotels. The initiative is spearheaded by the local hotel association AHCPM&IM, the municipal government of Benito Juárez, and the sustainability consultancy Sustentur, with financial backing from the TUI Care Foundation. According to the release, this marks a major shift in how the destination conceives of its waste flows, guest experience, and ecological messaging.
What travelers can expect at Cancún’s hotels and beaches
At participating hotels, visitors will start to see fewer single-use plastics — water bottles, straws, amenity containers — and more refill stations, along with newly installed sorting bins for paper, glass, and plastic. Properties will be organised in six-monthly cohorts that roll out changes and track results, with some inviting guests to participate by returning glass for reuse or bringing a refillable bottle to the pool, for example. Lobby signs and elevator prompts will explain why fewer disposables appear in your room and how to separate recyclables.
The plan aligns with global frameworks like the Global Tourism Plastics Initiative, which urges hotels to radically reduce single-use plastics at the source. The 2023 annual progress report notes waste- and recycling-training for hotel staff as a core component.
Beyond the hotel walls, Cancún’s program extends into the region’s ecosystem: public beaches, cenotes, mangroves, and seabeds. The city cites a current figure of roughly 1,500 tons of garbage generated each day. In response, the plan combines prevention (reducing waste produced in the first place) and remediation (faster, smarter clean-ups). Visitors may be invited to join beach or lagoon clean-up events organised by municipal or hotel-association partners.
Mexico’s coastal regions face immense pressure from plastic waste and marine debris. A recent project in Quintana Roo aimed to reduce plastic waste by 50 percent among hospitality businesses in just one pilot region.
Who’s paying (and why that matters)
Part of the funding for the program comes from the local environmental sanitation tax applied to hotel bills. The release cites a June 2025 notice of 79.20 MXN (about $4.50 USD) per room, per night for one major hotel group, with this fund now more tightly tied to measurable waste-reduction and ecosystem-restoration projects. (Exact amounts may vary by property and date.) In Mexico more broadly, less than ten percent of municipal solid waste is recycled — reinforcing the scale of the challenge for destinations such as Cancún.
For travelers, the invitation is clear: bring your reusable bottle and use resort refill points; sort recyclables where bins are provided; choose beaches that hold independent eco-certifications; ask your concierge about scheduled clean-up events.
In line with Cancún’s broader shift toward sustainable tourism, the region is increasingly positioning itself beyond the all-inclusive sun-and-sand narrative and into nature-and-conservation mode.
Elsewhere in Mexico’s tourism sector, hotels have eliminated plastic straws, replaced bottles, and trained staff on waste-management protocols. Grupo Xcaret announced that all of its parks had eliminated single-use plastics, installing refill stations and separating waste streams. Cancún’s initiative surpasses those earlier efforts in one dimension: the sheer scale of coordination — municipal government, hotel association, international foundation — and the ambition of a three-year timeline to become Mexico’s first “zero-waste tourist destination.”
With more than 20 million tourists visiting Cancún in 2024, according to the region’s tourism ministry, the environmental footprint of that visitor volume demands structural responses. The zero-waste program suggests that the destination is not simply reacting to reputation risk; it is rethinking how hospitality infrastructure, waste systems, and guest behaviour can align.
In the meantime, if you are planning a stay in Cancún anytime in the next few years, your luxury resort may feel subtly different. Fewer single-use bottles in your minibar, clearer signage in the lobby, perhaps an invitation to join a morning beach clean-up instead of a pool party.
Where to stay in Cancún
From jungle to beach front, solar-powered to rainwater collection, Cancún is already an eco lover’s destination.
Hotel Xcaret
NIZUC Resort & Spa
El Rey Del Caribe
Sandos Caracol Eco Experience Resort
Le Blanc Spa Resort Cancún
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