Giulia Gotti's "A day in the life of a bottle collector" is a behind-the-scenes look at how bottle collectors from Romania and West Africa prop up Denmark's Roskilde Festival's image of progressive idealism.
Roskilde's marketed image is a utopian space, with no mention of the harsh reality of the people who collect discarded bottles and cans for refunds. While 130,000 festival-goers experience what the festival calls the "Orange feeling" — described by one attendee as a place "where you can be who you really are or become someone new" — hundreds of workers endure punishing conditions to make a living from others' waste.
Roskilde's celebration of freedom depends on this hidden labor economy: "The festival's carefree revelry depends in part on the relentless labor of others — a quiet contradiction in its ethos."
Through first-hand experience volunteering at refund stations, Gotti documented how these collectors work around the clock, often with little to no sleep, competing fiercely for every bottle in a system that both exploits and depends on them. One collector named Joe, who lives in Italy and works at a pizzeria near Rome, must collect approximately 75 bottles per hour to match the hourly wage of a dishwasher in Denmark — "not counting the countless hours spent waiting in line to exchange them." When asked about sleep, Joe "simply says he doesn't sleep, only works — and laughs."
"Bottle collectors operate in a gray area of regulations," Gotti said. "Many festival goers mistakenly believe the refund collectors are employed as cleaners by the festival, but this is not the case. They are all paying for a regular, full festival ticket."
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