Among the poor people selected by the Sisters of My Tho to receive food are the can and bottle collectors. The nuns said that some of them were known by the Sisters, while others were referred by other people in the area. It is a network of poor people referring other poor to the Sisters.
The people who collect bottles and cans describe the job as: “People’s trash is our rice and clothes because they throw out their trash, and we collect it.”
There are a lot of risks with this job such as the bumpy roads while traveling with the collected trash can cause accidents or death. The bottle collectors are very territorial, so there is competition and fighting if other collectors are in the area. A small number of people are fortunate if they find a landfill where garbage trucks dump the trash. They have more opportunities to find scraps. However, standing on the piles of trash is very dangerous because of all kinds of sharp objects and crawling bugs. Digging through piles of trash is smelly work.
When accepting this job, they know that they will have to pick up trash, get very dirty and get sick with sinusitis from unsanitary conditions. There are times when they find expired food but are unable to smell whether it is rotten, so they bring it home to eat.
During the pandemic, many shops were closed, which had a serious impact on people who picked trash. For a long time, some only got a few plastic bottles and sold them at 4,000 VND / kg (17 cents / 1 kg); carton paper 1,500 VND / 1 kg (6 cents / 1 kg). They pray for good weather, because on a rainy days it is very difficult to collect bottles and wet boxes or paper cannot be sold.
Bottle pickers often share that collecting trash is dirty, but they don’t know what else to do. Some say that they don’t have anything to sell as street vendors or lottery ticket sellers, so this is their only option.
