By Leonardo Blair, Staff Reporter 
Salvagers search for goods at the Riverton City Dump in St. Andrew last week. - Carlington Wilmot/Freelance Photographer
COMPETITION IS stiff and the work is hard but scavenging through refuse from thousands of households across the Corporate Area is the only way informal sorters at the Riverton City Dump in St. Andrew know how to survive.
"This is the way we live," says the group of mostly young men and a few women.
They compete with cows, dogs, egrets and vultures which swarm the sea of garbage the air thick with a potpourri of foul odour.
With the Metropolitan Parks and Markets (MPM) trucks rolling in at frequent intervals, dumping here is like a suspense-thriller movie. There is the wait for the trucks to arrive then the crowd gathers as the trucks begin to unload and a convergence of man and beast on the refuse. People here search for different things. Some search for bottles, cardboard and 'loom' (aluminium) while others search for clothes and household items.
Last Christmas Miguel found $500 worth of one-dollar coins. And that was a windfall. Salvagers say a recycling company nearby pays $500 per day for a reasonable weight in salvaged cardboard. But reasonable can sometimes be about a 'tonne load' says Miguel and that is hard to come by sometimes considering the competition.
BOTTLES
Small glass drink bottles are bought for $5 per dozen while ketchup and Lucozade bottles fetch a higher $10 tag per dozen.
"The scent nuh nice down yah but true you know say yuh nuh want go tief and police shoot you and then them say yes, another yout' from Riverton dead. You can sell two bottle, some cardboard or some 'loom'," says the 20-year-old Miguel.
The older people can't compete with the young ones when the trucks come fresh with special deliveries like the one from Nestle. Last week they dumped expired shakes and drinks and the children had a feast.
Older women linger in their makeshift huts perched on stinking mounds of electronic and organic garbage. Some of them sort old clothes and onions.
"We sell the ray-ray," they say. Ray-ray refers to clothes and shoes in good enough condition to be resold in downtown Kingston markets.
"Don't take we picture and go write it in nuh paper go make the people them know say a dump we get them from!"
"Look pon all the people and the pickney them who not going to school. Them mother nuh have it fi give them so them haffi come out yah so come look it," says Faye, who had come to the dump in search of food for her pigs.
LIFE
But for dump sorters like Miguel, scavenging is life. "A long time we a do this. Right yah now mi have all mi house outta this. Is out yah so mi get the board them fi build it dung a Riverton. This is where mi get mi fridge, mi stove, mi iron and mi computer. Whole heap a computer!"
Miguel tells The Sunday Gleaner that he has collected approximately 10 computers so far and along with a friend has managed to get them running and plans to open up a game shop soon.
This picture, however, may soon change as according to Lloyd Thomas, national co-ordinator of Special Projects at the National Solid Waste Management Authority (NSWMA) there are plans to formalise the way sorting of garbage is done at the various dumps across the island.
Right now, explains Mr. Thomas, "They are not under our direction and protection. We are not responsible for them and they do not represent the NSWMA."
He explained that the current free-for-all at the dump will be restricted to persons employed by the NSWMA as they try to implement recycling programmes in the future.
Some persons on the site declared, however, that if this is to happen the authorities will have to find employment for everyone now scavenging at the dump as they have no other source of existence.
