Afrika Typografika - "A Taste for Waste"

With the thought of South Africa looming over head, and the quest for something local to spark my brain into action, I thought this to be the perfect opportunity to investigate a question I had been asking myself for ages. I have noticed that every morning, in every neighborhood, there are people (usually elderly woman) who dig through the black garbage bags left on the sidewalk for collection. I’ve always wondered what it is that people would be throwing away that could bring them back week after week, and was it enough to sustain themselves off, let alone a family. These were not just your ordinary homeless folk that you would expect to be rummaging through the bins at the beach front. Although they still looked poverty stricken, they still had a sense of pride and a decent level of self-presentation. Every week I would empty out my fridge and cupboards and leave anything slightly valuable in a separate box so as to avoid the nasty business of maggots and garbage slime (that I would become so familiar with over the next few weeks), and instantly saw an immense amount of gratitude and polite behavior I wouldn’t expect from my own neighbors. Taking to the streets, I hijacked garbage bags from my surrounding area, and to my utter disgrace, was removing things like full blocks of cheese, completely unopened with just a tiny bit of mold that could easily be cut away, still fresh fruit, clothing and other edible items disregarded and tossed out. Although this was nasty, as the older the bags were, the more disgusting the content got, I could very well understand why this was being done. The worst part is that even though we live in an area were recycling is collected, all you have to do is put it in a separate orange bag (like that’s so hard), yet the majority of items in the black bags were recycling (plastic and paper). I still can’t think of any possible reason for this other that utter laziness, a complete disregard for the environment or just plain selfishness. After this project, I have truly gotten a sense of respect for these people and think they are actually doing the country a service and helping in the fight against waist and pollution. The best possible thing we could do, in an ideal world, would be for the municipality to hire these people and provide them with the orange recycling bags, and they could separate the recycling as they go.