From Trashland >>> to WasteLand (Guardian.co.uk via Infectious Greed)

I recently posted a link to Trashland, Mozambique - a landfill of gargantuan proportions.  Or so I thought.  This morning, via Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed, I find this story of the largest landfill in the world.  In Brazil, and the topic of a documentary, a more than a little amazing piece that adds further perspective to our 'overuse' of our resources.

Rags to riches: a Brazilian rubbish picker looks for waste to recycle.
Photograph: vic muniz for the Observer

Scenes from the world's largest rubbish dump

Jardim Gramacho, the massive landfill site on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, is home to a colourful cast of characters who earn a living picking through the rubbish. Here, filmmaker Lucy Walker goes behind the scenes of her Oscar-nominated documentary about the lives of the 'catadores' and their collaboration with the radical artist Vik Muniz

So there I was, squelching knee-deep in trash in Rio's scariest favela on a wet afternoon, my arms too sore from vaccinations to move, my whole body wrapped mummy-like in multiple layers of noisy plastic protective clothing fit for a moon-landing. The Brazilian production manager was telling me how many security guards with machine guns we'd need. Next item on the checklist was bulletproof vehicles. The garbage smells were mugging our noses.I was in Jardim Gramacho, the largest landfill in the world, location scouting for my newdocumentary about Vik Muniz, Brazil's most famous contemporary artist. Muniz had come to Gramacho to create art with and about thecatadores, the people who pick through the trash mountain gathering recyclable materials for a living.

READ FULL STORY HERE


WASTE LAND Official Trailer from Almega Projects on Vimeo.