Irish radio DJ Elaine Howley posted this on Twitter the other day:

The teddy display at Cork City dump has always been strong but it is reaching new heights pic.twitter.com/AgHIfhAlp3

— Elaine Howley (@potentialprez) May 18, 2020

Which lead me to discover that, yes, this stuffed animal display like a terrifying hybrid of Toy Story and It is, in fact, a thing. As The Irish Times reported in September 2019:

As char­i­ties stopped ac­cept­ing toys they ar­rived in droves to the dump. But in­stead of dis­card­ing the on­celoved ted­dies, work­ers have placed them art­fully — and hu­mor­ously — around the en­trance to Cork’s Civic Amenity Site just off the South City Link Road.

[…]

"We used to do­nate the toys to char­i­ties, but health and safety reg­u­la­tions stopped that," [said site man­ager Derek Cam­bridge.]

"Ted­dies come in daily. Some ar­rive brand new. We thought chil­dren would take them so we left them out by the en­trance. But they didn’t, so we put them up here in­stead.

"It seemed a shame to just dump them."

I quite like Cork. Last time I was there, I enjoyed some great craft beer as I laughed at all the graffiti boasting that, "Cork is daycent." But a stuffed animal trash pile might be an even more beautiful metaphor for that fine city. Read the rest

In 2003, artist Tom Kiefer took a part-time job as a janitor at a Border Patrol facility in Ajo, Arizona. It was just something to subsidize his creative work. But he watched first-hand as things got more crowded, and policies became more cruel. He saw canned food taken away from migrants and donated to a food pantry, then later thrown away entirely, even though it was still good. The same thing happened with water bottles. Then there were the personal possessions deemed "non-essential" — the toothbrushes, rosaries, medication, and toys. Some things — like shoelaces — were thrown away as potential weapons.

So Kiefer began to collect these discarded items and photograph them. He gathered more than 100,000 items over the course of a decade or so, and saved them in his studio to photograph.

He's barely made it through the pile. But now the photographs are on display at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, providing a compassionate insight into migrant lives, and how the things that we discard might matter to some people.

You can learn more in the video, or check out the gallery website below.

El Sueño Americano | The American Dream: Photographs by Tom Kiefer at the Skirball Cultural Center Read the rest

In Ankara, Turkey, one person's trash is literally another's treasure. Garbage collectors started saving books once destined for the landfill and opened a public library.

CNN reports:

For months, the garbage men gathered forsaken books. As word of the collection spread, residents also began donating books directly.

Initially, the books were only for employees and their families to borrow. But as the collection grew and interest spread throughout the community, the library was eventually opened to the public in September of last year...

Today, the library has over 6,000 books ranging from literature to nonfiction. There is also a popular kid's section with comic books and an entire section for scientific research. Books in English and French are also available for bilingual visitors.

The library is housed in a previously vacant brick factory at the sanitation department headquarters...

The collection grew so large the library now loans the salvaged books to schools, educational programs, and even prisons.

(For Reading Addicts), image via CNN Read the rest