For The Guadalajara Reporter
Story and translation by Tracy L. Barnett
Photos by Jorge Delgado and Tracy L. Barnett

José Luis Zambrano Flores has pulled plastic six-pack rings off the necks of seabirds. He has freed sea turtles tangled in fishing nets. In the open ocean, the professional diver from Tabasco was horrified to see plastic bags with fish swimming inside them, trapped.

Zambrano wasn’t a scheduled speaker at Sunday’s Green Action Week workshop in Parque La Calma; he didn’t even know the organizers. He had simply shown up to learn about plastic packaging. But as he stood to share what he’d witnessed beneath the waves – “mountains of plastic, floating islands of waste” – the afternoon transformed from a scheduled workshop into something rawer and more urgent.

This is exactly what the Colectivo Ecologista Jalisco designs their workshops to achieve: creating space where citizens’ lived experiences collide with environmental data, where frustration transforms into action. Over nearly 40 years, CEJ has learned that the most powerful moments in environmental organizing aren’t scripted. They bring the framework – post-it notes for sharing experiences, product packaging with messaging to decode, an Instagram campaign to launch. But it’s the unexpected voices from the audience that bring the urgency, turning abstract statistics about plastic waste into visceral, personal stakes.

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The Art of Structured Spontaneity

Sunday’s workshop, part of the international Green Action Week funded by the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation and replicated in countries from Lebanon to Bhutan, drew about 30 participants to the weekly Tianguis del Recicle. CEJ facilitators arrived armed with stickers, markers, and a deceptively simple question: “¿De quién son los residuos?” – whose waste is it?

“We buy the product, not the packaging,” explained facilitator Saúl, holding up a disposable water bottle to demonstrate the three different types of plastic in a single container – the bottle, the cap, and the label. “So why does the responsibility for disposal fall entirely on us?”

The workshop’s structure invited interruption. Participants examined packaging labels, discovering contradictions like “Preserve the environment – deposit this empty container in the trash.” 

The heart of the workshop revolved around a Post-it note exercise designed to channel consumer frustration into collective action. Participants were asked to write their favorite product on an orange post-it note – items they genuinely loved, from Marisa bakery products to body wash to Santa Clara popsicles. On a yellow Post-it, they detailed what they hated about that product’s packaging: “It’s designed to be disposable,” “changed their wooden sticks to plastic,” “can’t actually be recycled,” “excessive layers of plastic within plastic.” The facilitators then had participants share these combinations aloud, creating moments of recognition as others realized they shared the same frustrations – “¡Sí, cierto!” echoed through the group.

But the real energy came from the unscripted moments. When participant Carmen stood to voice what many were thinking – “My neighbor separates all his waste, but when the truck comes, they mix it all together. What’s the point?” – heads nodded throughout the crowd. The frustration was palpable.

From Venting to Solutions

CEJ Director Maite Cortés, after 40 years of fighting this battle, shared the speaker’s frustration. “We have been working to implement proposals from the Official Mexican Standard for packaging with Extended Producer Responsibility,” Cortés said. “The plastics lobby killed our proposal. But we knew then what we know now – recycling alone was never the solution. It’s only a transition process.”

The facilitators channeled the group’s energy toward their campaign: “Me encanta tu producto, pero no tu empaque” (I love your product, but not your packaging). Erasmo Cruz, CEJ’s Project Manager, talked about calling Marisa bakeries to complain about their packaging, reaching a receptive employee who promised to pass concerns to management. “They didn’t have a program, but they listened,” she reported.

A cinema employee explained the corporate pressure workers face: “Even when customers bring their own containers for popcorn, we’re required to use the disposable boxes. They count them against our inventory.”

The workshop revealed how individual frustrations connect to systemic failures. The city of Guadalajara spends millions of pesos monthly on “puntos limpios (clean points)” for recycling, funded by taxpayers, yet trucks routinely mix the separated materials and cart them to the city’s overflowing landfills. 

The Transformation

As the afternoon progressed, complaints evolved into strategy. CEJ unveiled an Instagram filter allowing consumers to photograph problematic packaging and tag companies directly. They distributed forms for crafting targeted messages to corporations. José Luis asked for extra materials to take back to Tabasco, planning to replicate the workshop with his coastal community.

The intergenerational exchange proved particularly powerful. A grandmother spoke about educating her children and grandchildren, while young facilitators from CEJ demonstrated social media tactics for pressuring companies. 

“At CEJ, we say: ‘Information for action, not for depression,’” 18-year-old Saul Muñiz, CEJ’s adept young Operations Manager, as he and Cortés and co-facilitator Erasmo Cruz kept steering the discussion from despair toward practical steps. They connected local frustrations to global movements, explaining how the workshop’s demands align with ongoing Global Plastics Treaty negotiations.

The Closing Circle

The workshop ended with a group photo, participants holding signs reading “I love your product, not your packaging.” José Luis stood among them, no longer a stranger but a valued voice in the group. Carmen exchanged contact information with other frustrated recyclers.

This is CEJ’s evolution after four decades: from top-down advocacy to facilitating spaces where citizens discover their collective power. They’ve learned that the most effective environmental organizing doesn’t just inform – it creates conditions for community expertise to emerge and flourish.

“If there are more active consumers demanding these types of measures, or more capacity for refills or returnables, or all the alternatives we’ve been discussing, the market will move faster,” Cortés said. “Because normally they tell us, ‘Why should I make that effort if consumers don’t care that we continue in the same cycle?'”

As José Luis headed back to Tabasco with valuable new contacts and information, he represented something larger than one workshop’s success: the multiplication effect when environmental organizing makes space for lived experience to meet scientific data, when frustration transforms into coordinated action, when citizens stop waiting for solutions and start demanding them.

Learn about the CEJ digital tool “Navigating the World of Plastics”, a tool designed for consumers and citizen researchers, and CEJ’s activities on their Instagram or Facebook, and watch their webinar series on their YouTube Channel. 

Colectivo Ecologista Jalisco Maite Cortés Plastics Solid Waste