Living off the landfill: Indonesia’s resident scavengers (The Guardian)
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/27/indonesia-waste-tip-scavengers
Jakarta’s ’mountain’ waste tip provides a living – and a home – for 2,000 families Source: The Guardian
Living off the landfill: Indonesia’s resident scavengers | World news | The Guardian
►http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/27/indonesia-waste-tip-scavengers
Around 2,000 families are estimated to live and work at Bantar Gebang, but as Jakarta’s waste increases, so does the tip’s population. Most are unskilled workers from Java, some of whom have been scavenging in streets and rubbish bins their whole lives. But life here, says new resident Dadi, 25, can be a difficult adjustment. “I couldn’t eat properly for weeks when I arrived, the smell was so bad,” he says of the tip’s stench of curdled milk. “I vomited every day.”
Despite a strong sense of community on the tip, many also find that they are stigmatised when they cross its borders. “For a long time, it was hard to go back home,” says Sar Jok, 59, a “boss” who recruits new residents into teams of scavengers and sells their findings to independent recycling companies. “People would say, ’Why do you live on the dump? It smells bad, you smell bad’. But when they saw I made good money, their opinions changed.” Scavengers, some of them children as young as five, make around 30,000 rupiah (£2.20) a day. Like the few paddy farmers who still till what’s left of the neighbouring rice fields, many of Bantar Gebang’s residents must do all they can to survive off the land. Nila, 31, a mother of three, regularly scavenges for her family’s dinner. “I’ll find vegetables, and fish or meat on the mountain,” she says, cooking dinner over an open fire. “If it looks and smells OK, I take it. So far we’ve been lucky – nothing’s happened to us.”