Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, 6 November 2026 – Residents in Lomas del Coapinole burned their uncollected garbage on Thursday, prompting smoke complaints. Other areas were also reporting collection delays.
The burning took place on Thursday afternoon at Cartagena and Federalismo. Neighbors called 911 about the smoke.
“We’re suffocating, and they’re going to keep burning the rubbish,” said an unnamed resident to the outlet in Spanish.
The same report also included complaints from Matamoros and Galeana in El Cerro, with residents saying rubbish had been piling up on the sidewalks for three weeks.
For households affected by the missed pickups, the question is when we’re going to get back to a reliable collection regime. The Thursday account gave no municipal explanation for why the pickups were missed and provided no timescale for when those streets would be cleared.
Complaints extend across several neighborhoods
Elsewhere, people reported regularly that collections were being missed, not just in one instance. In a separate report published Thursday, residents on Puerto Las Peñas in Ramblases had gone four days without a collection truck.
Residents there said the same issue occurred a little more than a month earlier, with a truck arriving after a complaint via the local media. In La Floresta the neighbours told the same story, that their rubbish had not been collected since Monday.
The complaints follow Vallarta Daily’s November 1 coverage of five days without garbage pickup near Brasil and Honduras in 5 de Diciembre. PVDN also reported missed collections on October 29 in Lázaro Cárdenas and 5 de Diciembre, with residents and businesses in those areas complaining about the waste piling up and the resulting odors.
A service problem with an added smoke risk
The city has previously admitted to staff shortages in its collection service. In July, municipal public services director Rodolfo Domínguez said the city needed 45 additional drivers and sanitation workers.
The report states that crews will require one driver and two sanitation workers per truck. That’s just background on the level of service required; it doesn’t establish the reason for the missed pickups this week.
Burning the backlog is another issue for the homes in the vicinity. The Mexican Social Security Institute advises against burning waste because the smoke is bad for health, and it recommends that people avoid areas where waste is being burned.
Mexico’s Comisión Ambiental de la Megalópolis has identified rubbish burning as a source of airborne particles small enough to enter the respiratory system, with children and the elderly most at risk.
In Cartagena and Federalismo, the collection complaint had already become an emergency call about smoke.
