Your rubbish, their lives
When things seem to be getting the better of you, take a moment to remember where you are. You have a roof over your head, water, food, clothes on your back – sure I’m taking a guess, but you are after all reading my blog, and I sincerely thank you for that.
This series of striking photographs shows the grim reality for thousands of people living in refuse sites across the globe.
The rubbish scavengers spend their days clambering over huge mounds of waste, dumped into landfills.
They sift through the rubbish looking for anything that can be used or resold.
The photo above is by David Barbour and was shot in the Philippines. You can check out more of his work by visiting his personal website.
Here’s a BBC article about life on a Brazilian rubbish dump. It tells of a (past?) community of 3,000 people living off the so-called Lixão - an officially controlled landfill - of the city of Brasilia’s Estrutural district. The story may have been published in 2002 but it all sadly still rings true in many other global locations.
Organisations such as Amnesty and Oxfam do all they can to prevent this continuing.
Each photo is from a different online source. If you are one of the photographers I’d greatly appreciate you letting me know so that I can add full accreditation.
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A striking series indeed. Thank you for sharing this. It’s amazing how easily we get caught up in petty worries when others have to go through things like this just to survive.
It took me a while to reply, but I hope not too late for you to read my thanks.
It’s always good to take a step back in life, and to realise just how much more we have than most other people on this planet.