By JACQUELINE CHARLES
Ginette Sejour will tell you scouring through other people’s garbage is a dirty, smelly way to make a living.
But six days a week, this mother of seven and dozens of others trek through a slum once controlled by gangs, and arrive at a garbage processing plant where they spend the day sorting glass from metal, and plastic from paper.
As one team dumps the recyclables into color-coded bins, another gathers and rips discarded paper and cardboard into bits. Using a technique that is as frugal as it is green — it requires little more than water, sawdust, a wooden mortar, rusty 32-ounce tomato cans, sawed-off PVC pipes and a locally-made press — they crush wet paper into slow-burning logs, a cheap alternative known as briquettes. Read More…