Randy Olson, Melissa Farlow Photography

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Informal plastic waste worker makes his rounds in very early morning in Varanasi, India because the city temperatures rise in unbearable heat during the day. This is the Beniyapark neighborhood. Varanasi hires government trash workers but not nearly enough for the 1.2 million population and all the tourists. So people put their trash on the street and wait for informal trash workers/recyclers or some government worker to come by and clean up the street. It’s not a great system. Pappu is part of the informal trash picker system, and he collects plastic waste to recycle.

Copyright
RANDY OLSON
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6720x4480 / 18.5MB
Keywords
Contained in galleries
Plastic or Planet? National Geographic magazine 3/2018
Informal plastic waste worker makes his rounds in very early morning in Varanasi, India because the city temperatures rise in unbearable heat during the day. This is the Beniyapark neighborhood. Varanasi hires government trash workers but not nearly enough for the 1.2 million population and all the tourists. So people put their trash on the street and wait for informal trash workers/recyclers or some government worker to come by and clean up the street. It’s not a great system. Pappu is part of the informal trash picker system, and he collects plastic waste to recycle.