Brazil's Garbage Pickers Get a Funky Makeover for Their Carts

Brazil is home to about a million freelance professional waste pickers, or catadores. These workers are not necessarily highly respected, notes the graffiti artist Thiago Mundano. Still, the pickers are almost entirely responsible for the one-third of trash that does get recycled in Brazil, collecting almost 50,000 tons of waste per day. These people have stepped up waste collection when the government has been loathe to—but some local officials still won’t cooperate with the waste pickers, whom they view as “scavengers.”

This is “heavy, honest, and essential work that benefits the entire population,” Mundano said in a recent TED Talk. That’s why he started his popular “Pimp My Carroça” project in 2007. (The name comes from the mid-2000s MTV show that souped up sad-looking cars.)