Using ropes but no brooms, four rock-climbing garbage
collectors are tasked with removing tonnes of trash dumped down
hillsides by residents of Rio's famed favelas.
Donning helmets, harnesses, gloves and climbing goggles, these
trashmen can dangle up to 80 meters (260 feet) in the course of a
day picking up "vertical waste" with special hooks and rakes.
"After the cleanup, the amount of bugs and mosquitoes
diminishes," said Genilson de Souza, 36, one of the sanitation
workers.
The rock-climbing specialists have been employed by a municipal
garbage collection company for nearly 10 years but more need to be
hired now as hillside neighborhoods that were once no-go zones are
now considered safe.
So far, more than 20 favelas have been occupied by the
authorities as part of a pacification campaign aimed at cleaning up
gang-ridden neighborhoods before the 2014 World Cup and the 2016
Olympic Games.
"With no place to put their garbage, residents throw it out
their windows, down the hillsides. Now we're going to have to train
people to use garbage cans," said Horacio Magalhaes, a member of
the Pavao-Pavaozinzho neighborhood association whose Copacabana
favela was pacified last year.