April 2, 2013
The Zabbaleen (Egyptian Arabic: ‘Garbage people’) are teenagers and adults who have served as Cairo’s informal garbage collectors for the past 70 to 80 years. They are also known as ‘Zarraba’ (‘pig-pen operators’).
Spread out among seven different settlements scattered in the Greater Cairo Urban Region, the Zabbaleen population is between 50,000 and 70,000. The largest settlement is Mokattam village, nicknamed ‘Garbage City,’ located at the foot of the Mokattam Mountains, next to Manshiyat Naser, a slum settlement on the outskirts of Cairo. The Zabbaleen community in Mokattam Village has a population of around 20,000 to 30,000, over 90 percent of which are Coptic Christians.
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April 2, 2013
Manshiyat Naser, also known as Garbage City, is a slum settlement at the base of Mokattam Hill on the outskirts of Cairo.
Its economy revolves around the collection and recycling of the city’s garbage. Although the area has streets, shops, and apartments as other areas of the city, it lacks infrastructure and often has no running water, sewage, or electricity.
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April 2, 2013
Garbology [gahr-bol-uh-jee] is the study of modern refuse and trash. As an academic discipline it was pioneered at the University of Arizona and long directed by archaeologist William Rathje.
The project started in 1973, originating from an idea of two students for a class project. It is a major source of information on the nature and changing patterns in modern refuse, and thereby, human society. Industries wishing to demonstrate that discards originating with their products are (or are not) important in the trash stream are avid followers of this research, as are municipalities wishing to learn whether some parts of the trash they collect has any salable value.
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April 2, 2013
Food Not Bombs is a loose-knit group of independent collectives, serving free vegan and vegetarian food to others. Food Not Bombs’ ideology is that myriad corporate and government priorities are skewed to allow hunger to persist in the midst of abundance.
To demonstrate this (and to reduce costs), a large amount of the food served by the group is surplus food from grocery stores, bakeries and markets that would otherwise go to waste. This group exhibits a form of franchise activism. The organization was founded in 1980 in Cambridge, Massachusetts by anti-nuclear activists. One of the co founders was C.T. Lawrence Butler.
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April 2, 2013
Dumpster diving (called ‘skipping’ in the UK) is the practice of sifting through commercial or residential waste to find items that have been discarded by their owners, but that may prove useful to the dumpster diver. Dumpster diving is also viewed as an effective urban foraging technique.
Dumpster divers will forage dumpsters for items such as clothing, furniture, food, and similar items in good working condition. The dumpster diving term originates from the best-known manufacturer of commercial trash bins, Dempster, who use the trade name ‘Dumpster’ for their bins, and the fanciful image of someone leaping head first into a dumpster as if it were a swimming pool. In practice, the size and design of most dumpsters makes it possible to retrieve many items from the outside of dumpsters without having to ‘dive’ into them.
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April 2, 2013
Oscar the Grouch is a Muppet character on the television program ‘Sesame Street.’ He has a green body (during the first season he was orange), has no visible nose, and lives in a trash can. His favorite thing in life is trash, as evidenced by the song ‘I Love Trash.’ A running theme is his compulsive hoarding of seemingly useless items.
‘The Grouch’ aptly describes his misanthropic interaction with the other characters, but also refers to his species. The character is performed by Caroll Spinney, and has been performed by him since the show’s first episode.
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