A vortex of black vultures announces the approach of what was once one of the biggest landfills in Latin America: the Gramacho dump on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. Soon after appear the first shacks that form the shanty town of Esqueleto (Skeleton), a community of about 5,000 catadores (rubbish pickers) who live in the shadow of the dump and survive on consumer cast-offs.

The vast wasteland neighbourhood is an unforgettable sight, particularly when the wind whips up a dust devil that twists more than 20 metres high then dies seconds later, leaving a blizzard of black, blue and white shreds of plastic dancing in the sky.

Gramacho is an urban planner’s nightmare and a film-maker’s dream, perhaps one of the reasons why it is here that director Stephen Daldry (of Billy Elliot fame) set his latest film, Trash. Based on a 2010 novel by Andy Mulligan and scripted by Richard Curtis, it tells the story of three teenage catadores in Rio who make a discovery in the rubbish that turns their lives upside down. With its feelgood mix of adventure and the comfortable morality of lovable urchins up against an evil system, the movie is inevitably being described as a Brazilian Slumdog Millionaire. It has already proved a crowd pleaser, winning the people’s choice award at the Rome film festival. As a work of social realism, however, it ought to be several years out of date.

In a move made with the best environmental and social intentions, Gramacho was declared closed by mayor Eduardo Paes in 2012, in the runup to the Rio+20 global sustainability conference. The dump was covered with earth and trees, and an eyesore was removed. Its gas emissions were trapped and tapped for electricity generation. Sophisticated recycling centres replaced the landfill so less-polluted groundwater would flow into Guanabara Bay. And the catadores were promised compensation and training to help them make new homes and find new jobs.

But in this case, reality has kept abreast of fiction – at least in terms of the surprising staying power of the waste-pickers and the not always helpful actions of the authorities. Closure has made life worse for many residents of Esqueleto by taking away their main means of earning an income. Low or non-existent levels of literacy have deterred people from taking training programmes or applying for alternative jobs. The recent fall in price of many commodities has only added to their economic problems. The most active and educated have fought for more benefits and opportunities. The rest are left to work on the hundreds of new mini-dumps that have sprung up around the old site.

Few expect a happy ending, but while their experiences are different from those of the young protagonists in the film, they too have their dramas, their horrors and their dreams. Here, three former child catadores at Gramacho describe how they have coped with threats from authority, dreamed of life-changing discoveries and made a living from trash.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘I have seen some horrible things’ ... Sebastiana Pimenta (left) after a day’s work at the new Valter dos Santos recycling cooperative. Photograph: Lianne Milton

Sebastiana Pimenta

‘I saw garbage trucks tipping over on to people’

Sebastiana, 35, started scavenging when she was 14. Back then, she says, any film-maker could have used the dump as the perfect vision of hell. She would wake at 4am, go out with a torch and not return home until 10pm. The work was simple but exhausting. Sift and sort the trash for anything that could be recycled – plastic bags, aluminium cans, copper wire, cardboard, newspapers – then fill as many bags as possible and haul them off to waiting trucks. In a good week she could earn up to 300 reais (about £75).Despite the low pay, the risks were high. The dump was full of toxins (to avoid this, Daldry built an artificial rubbish heap for the shooting of Trash) and it was producing so much gas that pickers were able to use it to cook soup. The broken, uneven surface posed a constant danger. At one point, Pimenta was jabbed by a large needle and feared for several weeks she might be infected. “I was lucky, but I have seen some horrible things: gashes, jabs, skin being ripped off and garbage trucks tipping over on to people.”

Pickers – some of whom were on drugs, she says – would also get into fights over trash on an almost daily basis. As a child, she needed sharp elbows to survive. “I’ve been in arguments. You had to be tough to keep what you found. If you let your head down, someone would jump on you.”

But while she fought for copper and plastic, the one time Pimenta genuinely struck it rich, she gave everything away. Around the age of 16, she found an envelope containing 22,000 reais (£5,500) in 50 reais notes. “I thought it must be fake at first. When you are poor and you see so much money, you can’t believe it,” she recalls.

It would have been enough to change her life. Instead, she generously showered her family and friends with cash and lent the rest to people who promised to pay her back but never did. Within a month, there was nothing left. “I was young and stupid … I didn’t spend anything on myself,” she says. “I kind of regret that. I wouldn’t do the same thing now, but of course now I don’t get that chance.”

After the dump closed, she received 14,000 reais in compensation and is now working in a nearby recycling factory. “Here you don’t hurt yourself. It’s safer and cooler, but I preferred it over there (on the dump). Our lives were better before. Now we make in a month what we could earn in a week,” she says. “I wish I could go back.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘I like living here’ ... Mara Lucia Feitosa with one of her 12 children, in Esqueleto. Photograph: Lianne Milton

Maria Lucia Feitosa

‘At least I’ve never had the extra burden of a husband’

Feitosa, 40, moved to Gramacho at the age of 13, after her family fell on hard times, and immediately began sifting through the refuse. Since then, she has raised 12 children of her own in the shadow of the dump. Their home – a corrugated tin roof perched on flimsy wooden walls – is simple but immaculately clean and built just three weeks ago with donations and money saved from the 594-reais bolsa familia poverty relief payments she receives each month from the government. “I put all our cash into the home so my kids got nothing for Christmas and we had no special meal over the holidays,” she says.

The location is grim. In a single square metre outside, there are fragments of plastic tubing, rubber erasers, electricity sockets, kitchen tiles, a champagne bottle, Christmas tree baubles and a baby doll. Multiple fires are burning on smaller heaps nearby, which are added to every day by illegal dumpers. Some residents say the environment has deteriorated since the main site was closed because fly tippers – who want to dodge the higher costs of official recycling plants – unload their trash elsewhere in Esqueleto.

Feitosa says her children suffer bronchitis and pneumonia because of the gases from the dump, but she prefers to look on the bright side. “People speak badly about this neighbourhood, but I like living here. Nobody disturbs you. The worst thing is the lack of water.” (The government has promised to run pipes into the area, but never delivered.)

She dreams of getting away, but lacks the means. The most money she found was 600 reais – hardly enough for a change of life. Others were luckier, but squandered their fortunes. “One friend of mine found a bag full of gold jewellery. He didn’t take it seriously at first and threw it up in the air at people as if it was a joke. But then he realised it was real and divided up what was left among his kids and neighbours. He didn’t have much left,” Feitosa recalls. “If it were me, I’d hide it under my shirt and pretend I was sick. Then I’d buy a home in the countryside for my family with fruit trees and water.”

After the closure of the dump, she received 13,900 reais in compensation, but it lasted less than half a year. Now she has no paid work and relies solely on bolsa familia. But she refuses to let her children work as she did. “They go to school. I want life to be better for them. Now, it is very difficult ... at least I’ve never had the extra burden of a husband.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Since the dump closed, we are in a whole new world’ ... Zumbi da Silva. Photograph: Lianne Milton

Zumbi (José Carlos da Silva)

‘We found books by Machiavelli and Marx that made us sharper’



Zumbi was nine when he began collecting trash at Gramacho while his younger siblings scraped dirt from foraged yoghurt and bread. “We moved here after my father died. Mum didn’t know how else to cope.” Now 39, he considers himself a successful pioneer of a modern and ambitious post-dump life.

Zumbi is one of the founders of the Valter dos Santos recycling cooperative, which was set up with land from the government and financial support from the energy company Petrobras after a 10-year struggle by the catadores’ union. “We blocked roads. We held workshops. We staged protests,” laughs the garrulous activist. “We carried out many demonstrations until they gave us what we wanted.”

The cooperative now encompasses two warehouses, a 200,000-reais elevated conveyor belt for sorting and three cardboard compressers. They are also trying to improve working conditions, raise living standards and remove some of the stigma surrounding the job. “Your rubbish. Our dream,” reads the slogan emblazoned on the T-shirts of the 38 workers at the facility.

Not everyone is convinced. Some residents of Esqueleto are envious. The Valter dos Santos workers – who are supposed to get an equal share of profits – are frustrated at the low incomes during months of low production. Zumbi accepts it is not easy to persuade former catadores, who are used to the freedoms of the dump, to accept the controls of the recycling plant. “We invite anyone to join us, but they have to realise that we are organised, that there are rules.”

Undeterred by setbacks, he outlines ambitious plans for expansion, saying they depend on business pragmatics rather than dreams of discovering a bonanza. “The real treasure here is the recyclable material,” he says, though he also claims inspiration from books he and his fellow activists picked up from the trash. “We found books by Marx and Machiavelli. They made us sharper.”

But the dump also taught about market economics. Every day, the pickers would decide what to focus on, depending on which commodities were most in demand and therefore most valuable – copper, plastic or paper. Now, he says his colleagues need to apply that acumen to their business. Success or failure, there is no turning back. “Since the dump closed, we are in a whole new world,” he says.

Additional reporting by Shanna Hanbury