A Nose-Plugging Day

This week, I had the pleasure of going to one of Bangkok's garbage dumps, and waste water treatment plant with the grade 6 and 7 students. Even though the entire day was led in Thai, I still learned a lot.

I learned where all the garbage from the garbage trucks gets dumped. Right here.
All of the garbage dumps in the city are privately owned. An entire community is created right in the dump. All of the people are educated up until grade 6. After that, no one goes to school because they can not afford the fees.

When the garbage gets dumped, every single square inch of it gets sorted by hand. After the items are sorted into plastics, metals, cardboard, etc. it goes to sorting places like this one (which is basically a small garage in someone's backyard). Here, the items are sorted again, weighed, and sold for a profit.
Next to nothing is actually left in the landfill.

Before selling plastic, they must know exactly what kind it is. To figure it out, they put small pieces of the plastic into a variety of buckets of salt and water (each with a different ratio of salt and water). If it sinks or floats in certain buckets, they can tell what it is. Simple but very effective.

At the waste water treatment plant, we saw a lot of this kind of stuff.

And this.

To be honest, I was pretty lost the whole time...couldn't tell you much about the place. All I know in Thai is the word for water, "nam". That's it.