Tide of Effort: Costa Mar's Beach Cleanup Reaches New Scale

On a Tuesday morning at Playa Esperanza, outside Puerto Azul, the tide line was a grey-brown stripe of tangled rope, plastic bottles, and seaweed matted with agricultural runoff. A crew of twelve — hotel staff, dive operators, and three retired fishermen — worked the line with rakes and mesh bags, moving steadily toward the palm trees. The work is repetitive and unglamorous. It is also becoming urgent.

The Costa Mar Reef Monitoring Network released its mid-year tally last week: 142 tonnes of plastic and nutrient-runoff debris removed from the peninsula's public beaches between January and June. That figure exceeds the entire removal total for 2025. The increase reflects both more volunteers and a visible worsening of the problem — rainfall patterns in Tierra Verde have pushed heavier nutrient loads downriver, and shipping traffic through the Oriente Moderno lanes has left more microplastic in the water column.

Marina Gómez, the network's coordinator, described the cleanup effort as a holding action. The real work, she said, happens upstream and offshore. But the beaches are where citizens see the problem, and where they can act. This summer, the beaches are where the peninsula's environmental conscience is gathering.