Puerto Green plans a $210 million recycling complex beside Humacao's El Coquí landfill
Puerto Green plans a $210 million recycling complex next to the El Coquí landfill in Humacao, Puerto Rico, which would process 3,000 tons of unsorted waste per day, metro.pr reported on October 8, 2026. The company's chief officer and chief financial officer lead the venture, according to the outlet.
What the company plans
The outlet described the project as a vertically integrated recycling complex that would recover more than a third of the incoming waste as commercial-grade material. It reported that the site would generate 240 direct jobs and include a $22 million research and development facility.
According to the outlet, $100 million of the money would come from the federal CDBG-MIT program and $40 million from founders and institutional investors, with local bank debt covering the rest. The company also holds $10.4 million in incentives from the Department of Economic Development and Commerce, the outlet reported. The Planning Board has designated the project as strategic, and the outlet said environmental permitting is nearly finished, with construction permits the next step.
The site
The El Coquí landfill occupies three properties in Buena Vista, Humacao, of 874,667 m2, 226,114 m2 and 143,646 m2, about 124 hectares in all. They are zoned I-P, heavy industry, on 96% to 98% of their area, classed as common rural land in the Puerto Rico Land Use Plan, and lie almost entirely outside the mapped flood zones.
The three properties carry 64 permit filings. A plant to convert landfill gas into renewable natural gas on the landfill property has an infrastructure approval of December 29, 2022 and a use permit approved March 31, 2023; its consolidated construction permit filings were marked incomplete in June 2025, and a new infrastructure request for the plant, dated September 28, 2026, has no status yet. The landfill's operating company had a pre-consultation on its operations approved February 18, 2025. No filing in the name of Puerto Green appears in the record, which matches the outlet's account that construction permits come next.
The land around the landfill is not industrial: of 1,155 properties within 1 km of the landfill property, 1,115 are zoned mainly R-I, intermediate residential.
Industrial property in Humacao
Industrial land in the municipality last changed hands in the registry on March 10, 2025, when a 7,818 m2 light-industry property on Carretera 3 Km 76.9 in Río Abajo sold for $1,500,000, about $192 per m2 of land. On the market, a 7,189 m2 industrial building on a 77,337 m2 lot in the Humacao Industrial Park, off PR-3 north of Km 76.9, is asking $2,800,000.
Humacao had 28 commercial properties listed for sale on October 17, 2026, and the registry shows 10 commercial sale deeds in October 2025, the latest month available after the recording lag; that count includes only deeds the registry typed as commercial.
What comes next
The company expects to close its federal funding in January and targets the second half of 2027 to begin construction, according to metro.pr. The outlet reported that bringing the complex to full operation would take about four years.