Tulum garbage collection has fallen to between 2,500 and 3,000 tons a month, down from the 7,000 to 8,000 tons municipal crews hauled away during peak tourist season.
The figures come from Audomaro Solís, director general of public services, who tied the decline to fewer visitors and to reduced operations at hotels, restaurants and shops across the municipality.
The gap ranges from 4,000 to 5,000 tons every month. It is the hardest number anyone in Tulum has put on the summer slowdown, and it comes from a department that measures the town's activity by weight rather than by sentiment.
A gap of up to 5,000 tons a month
Solís said the current volume oscillates between 2,500 and 3,000 tons of solid waste a month. In periods of heavy tourist arrivals, the municipality was collecting 7,000 to 8,000. Public services attribute the difference to the lower level of economic activity sustaining the establishments tied to tourism. Habits did not change. Volume did.
Tonnage is an unglamorous statistic, but it has one advantage over most tourism data. It is weighed, not surveyed. Occupancy rates depend on what each hotel chooses to report and arrival figures take weeks to consolidate, while the waste is measured as it comes in.
The relationship works in both directions. When visitors arrive in force, the same department has reported a 20 to 30 percent increase in waste generated during vacation weeks. This summer the curve went the other way.
Fewer guests, fewer bags at the curb
Hotels, restaurants and commercial establishments are among the destination's largest waste generators. Lower occupancy and a thinner flow of customers mean the collection routes reach the collection points within days, because an unrented room and an unserved table produce almost nothing to pick up.
The chain does not stop at the bin. Fewer covers in a restaurant means fewer shifts for the kitchen and smaller orders for suppliers. The tonnage that disappeared from the trucks had already disappeared from somebody's invoice.
Tulum garbage collection routes are running light
For the crews, the smaller volume means less operational pressure. Fewer trips and lighter loads. Solís acknowledged that the relief carries a second meaning, because the same figure that eases the brigades' work also serves as an indicator of the municipality's deceleration as tourist movement drops.
Occupancy on the coast has sat near 15 percent since May
The waste figures match what the business sector has reported all summer. Hoteliers, restaurateurs and merchants describe activity as below that of other vacation periods, with effects that extend beyond their own payrolls.
David Ortiz Mena, president of the Mexican Caribbean Hotel Council and of the Tulum Hotel Association, has placed average occupancy in the coastal hotel zone at about 15 percent, a level he says has held since May. He points to two causes above the rest. The volume of sargassum reaching the shore, and a reduction in airline seats into the region.
Cleaning the sand carries its own invoice. The hotel council has cited costs of up to 500,000 pesos per week to remove the algae, an expense borne by the same businesses that are now filling fewer bins.
Ortiz Mena has also pointed to competition the hotels did not face at this scale a few years ago. Tulum has roughly 4,500 vacation rental listings registered on digital platforms, compared with about 6,500 in Cancún, a city with far more rooms and far more visitors. The council's projection for the season puts occupancy around 20 percent below 2024 levels.
Hoteliers weigh shutting down until the sargassum eases
Ortiz Mena said recently that hotel owners have evaluated operating only during stretches when the sargassum landing is lighter, given the cost of the cleanup and the effect the algae has on bookings. Reports through August have described properties along the coastal strip suspending operations rather than run at a loss.
A seasonal model would show up in the trash figures before it shows up anywhere else. Closed kitchens and idle laundries generate almost nothing.
Public services continue to run their routes at a fraction of peak-season load. The hotel council expects businesses to operate in deficit until the middle of October. If the trucks are still coming back light after that date, the tonnage will have confirmed what the occupancy reports have been saying since May.
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