Metal collector

Often old appliances are illegally dumped in our neighborhood. A possible reasons can be that the city garbage service ‘Bruxelles Propreté’ is not always very effective. Throwing certain materials away in containerparks is paid, and can be expensive. Not everybody has a car to bring big objects to a container on the other end of the city. And also, free garbage pick up is limited to a certain volume per year. A result that is visible on many street corners: piles of illegally deposited furniture, trash and left overs.

In this context an emerging profession is the private garbage collector. Some objects contain valuable materials such as metals; for example in the case of copper wiring. The man in the picture, sitting on a dumped washing machine, guards it while another person is getting a van to take it to the metal dealer.