Turning trash into treasure: What the Romani do with discarded machines
the hidden economy of recycling in the Roma world
“You may look down on us for picking up the things you throw away,” says Pepi, “but where you see trash, we see the gold underneath.”
An old washing machine stops working. You haul it to the garbage container and forget about it. Its destiny is to go to the piles of trash in the junkyard.
Unless it’s spotted by a Romani first.
For obvious classist reasons, people here look down on the Romani for “picking up things from the trash.” The history behind this is simple and tragic: systematic destruction of the Roma ancestral crafts and way of life, the segregation of Roma communities in ghettos, a life in extreme poverty with performative but limited access to education and work. You can read more about this in our article Are the Romani lazy?
But for now, let’s set all this aside. Let’s only look at the act of picking up a broken thing from the trash.
Our modern consumerist societies see this as unskilled and even parasitic labour. Of course they can’t see it as anything else, because that would require taking a realistic look of what they throw away - and this is harder than you think.
The reality though, is that this is an entire culture of recycling that runs on very rich and practical knowledge, on a big portfolio of skills, on significant physical strength and fitness, on knowledge of psychology and human nature, and on ancient hunter-gatherer instincts. It is hard, skilled labour that for Roma communities, provides a more reliable income than anything else, and for society in general, provides recycling in its purest form.
Why are people more likely to throw out big things after sunset?
How does a magnet determine if a material is worth the effort of picking up?
How can you tell, with a single glance, in a split second, the make of something and its price?
How do you dismantle a huge broken thing into small intact parts of great value? How can you quadruple the value of a washing machine’s motor by breaking down to its components?
We will lift the curtain a bit and tell you.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to The Sky and Earth Know to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.