On one of our days off from clinic work, the University of Iowa team and associated volunteers (like me!) went on a "tour" of the Mazatlan dump. During our visit, we were introduced to the dump workers, who sort the city's trash and get paid by the number of recyclables (mostly plastic bottles and aluminum cans) that they collect. The city has no formal recycling program and all waste goes in the same bin, which was so hard for me to get used to! But what eventually ends up decomposing in the dump lacks almost all potentially recyclable materials. How is this possible? Through at least four stages of sorting...first hotel and restaurant workers, second street people who root through dumpsters, third garbage truck workers, and finally the folks working at the dump.
The view of the dump from our parking spot, right on top of all of the trash.
Nice view on the drive up...one member of the crew remarked that this would be considered expensive real estate if we weren´t so close to the dump.
On our tour we traveled in the back of a truck and towed behind us a mobile kitchen. Once we got to the dump, we parked right on top of a mountain of trash and started grilling 300 hamburgers. Providing food to the dump workers is something that a local church does a few times a week, with the hope that the dump workers don´t have to choose between eating food scraps that they find and going hungry. At lunchtime we started serving burgers to the dump workers, giving them a break from their never ending scavenger hunt. Later on, we drove down to the neighborhood at the base of the dump and passed out more food to local kids and mothers who squat on unoccupied land to be near the dump. While the city of Mazatlan has put some restrictions on who can work at the dump (over 16 years old) and how many workers can be "employed," but there are still inherent dangers to their job, such as exposure to biohazards. What started as a temporary way to make money for most has now turned into a way of life for some familes who make houses our of materials found at the dump and sort around the clock.
It is an eye-opening sight to see people rushing up to the back of a garbage truck to get the fresh drop off. And it seems to be the most ineffective and unsafe way to reduce landfill waste, yet it is going on in many parts of the world. One related documentary that I have seen about dump workers in Brazil is called Wasteland, and I highly recommend it.
The mobile kitchen in action
Grilling 300 burgers...it was very strange to be unwrapping the packages and being able to just throw the plastic out the side of the truck because the dump was literally all around us!
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