Guatemalan Trash Collectors

One of the most important goals of the Daily Photo community is to show how different or similar daily life can be through out the cities around the world. Trash collecting for instance is something that happens in most urban communities, but how they collect the trash is not. In Guatemala for instance, trash collectors use these close mid-size trucks as shown above and on the right. Nothing like the trash collecting trucks I’ve seen in the U.S. and Mexico.

What to trash collecting truck look like where you live?

2 Responses to "Guatemalan Trash Collectors"

EBell says:
September 28, 2011 at 10:51 pm
And they drag all of that around on their backs! They are usually young teens and I always feel sorry for them. Someone really needs to implement a better system. (Like, for example, putting large bins on the back of tuk-tuks which then take the trash to the larger truck.)
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Eric says:
September 30, 2011 at 11:03 am
To be honest, Rudy, the trash-collecting trucks in my neighborhood don’t appear a whole lot differently. They have the compactors built-in, but they are small trucks, like the ones in the foto. They also have two or three persons to load the garbage in; a job that apparently cannot be performed without shouting complaints about how they hate their job. As someone currently unemployed, I would like to trade places with one of them, myself.
What happens after collection, Rudy? Does the trash get compacted or burnt, or does it just get dropped into a landfill? You’ve shown us several excellent recycling efforts, but I don’t recall an entry about what happens to the ‘regular’ trash.
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Guatemalan Trash Collectors

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