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(Photograph by Giles Clarke/Getty Images Reportage)
In a
200-acre-plus dump 5 kilometers north of Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince,
hundreds of men, women and children scavenge day and night through the burning
wasteland. They earn $12 to $15 a day — on a good day — for recycling plastics
as well as clothing, household items and aluminum (for smelting). Some 5,000
tons of waste is created each day in the Port-au-Prince area.
It is here
that the majority of the rubble from the January 2010 earthquake was dumped.
The quake killed more than 230,000 people in and around Port-au-Prince.
A few
companies have sprung up recently to buy the recycled plastic for 10 to 14
cents per pound.
Most of
the dump scavengers have major respiratory and other health issues. The
landscape is filled with the smoke from burning rubber, plastics and garbage.
Large pigs roam the mountains of trash, feeding off the rotting household
waste. They are eventually killed and sold by the internal dump-appointed
bosses.
Most
alarming is the amount of unregulated medical waste dumped here from city
hospitals and clinics. “We don’t know how much or what they dump,” said one of
the recyclers.
Ringing
the dump, still within the clouds of drifting toxic smoke, are hundreds of
corrugated tin shacks, where the workers live and deal in the various recycling
side businesses that the dump provides.
(Photograph
by Giles Clarke/Getty Images Reportage)
Photographing
this area was by far one of the more taxing projects I have attempted. Many of
the dwellers have fled the city and gang affiliations and do not want to be
seen. As the Haitian National Police rarely visit here, it has become a safe
haven for some of Port-au-Prince’s more shady characters.
I was
given patrol access in the dump over three days in January. Questions to
officials were left, for the most part, unanswered, but one thing is clear:
Proper incineration and waste disposal is needed, as only 10 percent of the
city’s waste is collected by the state.
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