A troubling trip to the Mae Sot Garbage Dump

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British David, his Thai girlfrend Kung, French Emmanuella (who hailed from WM's ancestral home in central France) and WM wangled a car and drove 20 minutes north of town to visit the garbage dump, home to thousands of Burmese refugees.

The photos illlustrate the following story.

When garbage is thrown out in Mae Sot, trashpickers with bicycle carts rummage through it, removing recyclables with cash value. The remaining garbage is trucked to a recycle plant on the edge of the dump, where it is sorted for recyclables missed by the in-town trashpickers.

Afterwards, it is trucked to the dump, where thousands of Burmese live, eking out a horrible existence picking through what has been picked through twice before.

I saw an old man curled up and about to die in his shanty, which out of respect I did not photograph. David told me the last time he was here he saw people making soup from chicken bones they picked out of the refuse. Nobody wore gloves when sorting through these sharps in this filthy environment..

I never saw so many flies in my life, and I cannot describe the stench. There is a local restaurant in town that raised money for mosquito nets for the folks who live here --the nets were being used to store plastic for hauling

There is a lake of putrid green water filled with deadly amounts of cadmium used for bathing and watering the bean and pumpkins they grow.

If you read little else, enlarge the photo of the Blue Sky School and open the link.