The decline of the livelihood for the established workers and the youth of the Coptic Christian Zaballeen community in Cairo, Egypt is recorded in the documentary Garbage Dreams: Raised in the Trash Trade. The viewer enters the world of Adham (17 years old), Osama (16), and Nabil (18) and Laila, a community member and social worker. Small recycling microbusinesses have supported the community, but transnational corporations from Italy and Spain move in to take-over the garbage collecting and recycling industry in Cairo. The life of the Zaballeen workers is not presented as easy in the least, in fact children and adults in the community must receive tetanus shots at regular intervals. Poverty and "making do" is visually presented in most every home scene. One father will go to jail for not being able to pay the permits needed to build a small addition on the tenement-like living structure for his son and future family to live. The youth show a great respect for the possibilities of trash and are dismayed to see landfills and lack of attention to the smallest detritus that pervades the practices of the corporate recyclers. The Zaballeen realize that while they recycle 80% of the trash in their labors, the corporations only recycle 20%. The knowledge of trash almost works as a kind of ecological knowledge in the community. Exposed to a wider set of skills through the community recycling school, the coming-of-age Zaballeen youth still struggle against their almost caste-like position, “the nothing class,” and the lack of earnings and employment and a dismal outlook at seeing their livelihood disapear. Laila helps community members of all ages in an assortment of ways and continues to coach everyone to be optimistic and strategically minded. Environmental justice issues of many kinds connect to this film.
http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/garbage-dreams/film.html (this has an interesting game as part of the website)
Iskander, M. (Director). (2009). Garbage dreams: Raised in the trash trade. NY: Cinema Guild.