Three rivers feed the Bay of Asunción: Antequera, Peru, and Mercedes. Those are the only three. Stop the trash in those three, and you stop most of what reaches the bay.
So that's the plan.
- Phase 1: Antequera. 3-month pilot. Learn everything we can.
- Phase 2: Replicate on Peru and Mercedes. Apply what worked. Discard what didn't.
- Phase 3: Open-source the design, the data, and the operating playbook. Make it free for any community in any country to copy.
The first project under our association is called Guardián de la Bahía — Guardian of the Bay. That's what Phases 1 and 2 are. The shielding of one specific bay in one specific city.
But the association itself is called Marea. And that name is doing more work than it looks like.
"Marea" means tide. Tides connect every coast on Earth. The trash in our bay travels the same way water does — across borders, across continents, into oceans. The same fast-fashion supply chain that ends up in our creek ends up in dozens of others. The same plastic crisis we're trying to fix is being fought in Bali, in Baltimore, in Lagos, in Manila.
Calling the association Marea is a deliberate signal that this isn't a Paraguay-only project. It's a node in something global.
The actual win condition isn't "Asunción is clean." It's "the design is good enough that someone in a country we've never heard of, on a river we'll never visit, copies it without ever asking us for permission."
Real success = imitation.
If we ever have to chase down someone for using our design without crediting us, we will have completely succeeded. We don't want credit. We want copies.
Next post: how to actually help us. Money, time, expertise, contacts — all of it useful.