Looking for the Landfill

Paw Kham, a scavenger and leader in his community, surveys the Khombone Noy Landfill in Khon Kaen, Thailand.


The Khombone Noy Landfill receives 200 tons of waste each day. Gathered in such quantities, it is hard not to compare trash to something powerful and geological. Here the strata of 44 years of dumping emerge as older trash decomposes and leaches liquid mixed with toxic chemicals.


Scavengers comb through the river of trash that has just been unloaded.


The scavengers rake deftly through heaps of trash, holding their tools like a farmer might hold a hoe.


Meh Bi covers her arms, legs and head before going to work. For a farmer, these actions protect from sun, water, and insects; for a scavenger, from grime, fumes and syringes. When she is done, only Meh Bi’s hands and eyes will show, but not everyone has the masks, boots and gloves they need to protect themselves.

The workers harvest useful things from what people in the city don’t want, trading plastic, glass, and tin for money. Most scavengers work in the landfill for fifteen hours a day to make about 120 Baht, or 4 USD. People sorting through the trash save 39-47% of what would otherwise accumulate in the landfill.

Sometimes Meh Bi finds money. She checks each envelope, holding it up to the light. With careful sorting on a lucky day, you might even find a diamond ring mixed in among the rotting vegetables and juice bottles.


Meh Toi finds everything she needs in the landfill.


Reusing is a way of life. When her grandson pops his balloon, Meh Toi makes another one out of the scraps.


Meh Bi and Paw Neyoum’s makeshift garden. The villagers say the chemical-laced water from the landfill kills the rice crop. Smoke from the nearby incinerator, they think, makes vegetable plants look sickly. Although most of the scavengers plan to work in the landfill forever, many said they would like to have land to farm.


Bang, Meh Bi’s son, relaxes at home. If their families need the extra income, children might start working in the landfill as young as three or four. Bang’s father, Paw Neyoum says, “I want my kids to do something else, but if they have no other choice they will come back to scavenging.”

Who is more personal than the person who rips open the bag containing your toilet paper, who opens your discarded mail, who wears your old clothes? Like the people who feed us, those working in the landfill provide an invaluable service, and they are intimately connected to thousands of people. But to these people, they are just doing their job. When they rip open bags, they see money, not people. Garbage is grand and metaphorical only from a distance. From up close, it is individual objects, a source of work, and the lives of the people who comb through it every day.