Fast Fitness - Recycling and the Movie "Garbage Dreams"

Here is Fast Friday Fitness - Recycling trash is honorable and beneficial for people and Earth.

The word 'Zabal' is a person who collects trash. The Zabaleen of Cairo are a class of people who for generations, have collected the city's trash by hand, with devotion and honor, and the certainly that from their sweat, they do important work for their community and the world.

The Zabaleen recycle 80% of all they collect, all by hand. They build and run their own school to educate their children in literacy, manners, good and honorable conduct, studies, and recycling techniques.

The city decided it was progress to be modern and great like the West, and change to using trucks and companies to collect the trash, mostly dumped into landfill. The livelihood of the Zabaleen is dwindling. The movie Garbage Dreams shows their members visiting a landfill, incredulous that anyone would throw such literal treasure into a hole. One exclaimed that trash, and the possibilities and materials it possesses, is a gift from heaven, not to be wasted at cost to the Earth.

The movie tries to appeal to audiences by making it a drama of the decisions of three of the teen Zabaleen, but I hope the greater message the teens make is not lost. It is not progress to look down on classes of people. It is not progress to waste. It is not progress to be made to feel you are not good because you work to clean the world.

1. See the movie Garbage Dreams.
2. Learn a long-known, little talked-about world crisis encompassing health, politics, economics, sweat-of-the-brow work, pollution, and human rights.
3. Notice litter on the ground. Stop littering. Know that it is good and honorable to pick up trash, not something beneath your values. Pick up trash today (be prudent what you reach into). Thank others who do this work.
   

Links to Zabaleen:

• BBC article Cairo's devoted refuse collectors
  
• The movie's page - garbagedreams.com

Related Fitness on Fitness Fixer:

• The Movie Flow - Fast Fitness - Open Your Eyes and World View
• Stopping drugs from Burma - Muay Thai Monks on Horseback
• Judging people - Fast Fitness - Strengthen Character
• Saying thank you - Fast Fitness - Strengthen Yourself by Lifting Up Others
  
• Fast Fitness - Get in Shape with Good Deeds
• Good bending for picking up things - Cardiovascular Cleanup

Garbage Dreams was supported by a grant from the Sundance documentary film program. It won several Film Festival awards.