Editor’s note: Lisa Christine is a humanitarian photographer and artist. The views expressed in this comment are her own.
From a distance, it looked like a mountain rising in the brown haze of northern India, until I learned it was a landfill.
As I drove closer, it became clear that what I had mistaken for solid rock was compacted, sun-bleached trash piled dozens of stories high. Near the top, only human figures could be seen moving slowly across the surface. They were waste pickers who collected and sold waste. Not wearing protective gear, they blended into the toxic landscape.
“I’m going up,” I said. My interpreter looked surprised. “It’s too dangerous. There’s too much danger.”
After years of documenting modern slavery and forced labor, I have learned that the truth often lurks in places we are told not to look.
I came to India in late 2024 to photograph and document technology supply chains and identify potential gaps where human exploitation could occur.
Moving the garbage dump was dangerous. In some places, the compressed garbage felt as solid as the earth itself. Elsewhere, landfills have moved unexpectedly. India’s large garbage dumps are prone to methane fires and dangerous ground shaking, where piles of waste can catch fire, sink and collapse without warning.
Landfills are largely occupied by discarded clothing, and fast fashion debris is piling up faster than it can be absorbed. Shards of glass and ceramic, rusted metal, medical and biological waste, syringes, cracked circuit boards, and broken electronics were flying everywhere. The smell was overwhelming, a nauseating mix of rotting food, burning plastic, chemicals and decay that clung to clothes and skin. Vultures, crows, and gulls swarmed overhead, feeding on carcasses, insects, and other excrement.
We reached the top at dawn. Light filtered through the brown smog. That’s when I saw them clearly, it was children.
Some worked alone. Some, along with their families, silently scavenge for metal, plastic, electronics, paper, textiles and other items with their mothers and fathers and pack them into heavy bags. Many wore tattered flip-flops or shoes that offered little protection. I saw young girls carrying loads more than half their size.
Unlike formal sanitation workers, informal workers often lack basic safety equipment such as boots, gloves, and masks. For children, there is no age verification, no obligation to attend school, and no intervention. If someone collapsed from the heat, no one would notice, let alone help.
Undocumented workers face serious health risks. Skin infections caused by chemicals and contaminated waste, tetanus and hepatitis caused by needle injuries, respiratory diseases caused by toxic gases, and diseases such as typhoid and cholera. Cuts and burns are common. Children face this same risk because their developing bodies absorb toxins at a higher rate. Many families live next to garbage dumps, breathing in the fumes of burning garbage day and night.
In exchange for this deadly work, most waste pickers earn just a few dollars a day, well below minimum wage. There are no time limits, no access to medical care, no contracts, no injury compensation, and no social security. Labor laws apply in principle but are rarely enforced. Children are not exempt from this cruel reality. Their labor disappears under the label of “family work.” In almost every practical sense, these conditions mirror those faced by people engaged in forced labor.
Forced labor is generally considered to be work performed under conditions of duress or coercion. According to the International Labor Organization’s Convention on the Worst Forms of Child Labor (No. 182), the United Nations distinguishes between ordinary child labor and modern slavery, applying the term to the worst forms of child labor, i.e., work that is not only exploitative but also involves dangerous work that may “impair the health, safety, and morals of the child.”
Strictly speaking, these families are there of their own volition. But when survival is at stake, there are few alternatives, especially when child labor becomes necessary to sustain the family.
Many of the workers are immigrants. Some are excluded from formal employment due to caste discrimination or lack of documentation. Picking up waste requires no education, no legal status, and no capital. Children begin working at an early age and often never quit. In theory, workers are free to quit, but most cannot afford to. My income is too low to save money. Scrap prices are set by intermediaries who control access to buyers. Selling elsewhere requires transportation, storage, and legal status, all of which most undocumented workers do not have.
Some companies are blatantly in debt bondage, tied to loans from scrap dealers who dictate prices and terms. Debts are rarely repaid. Things change. Workers will remain detained indefinitely. Children born into these families start working to pay off debts they didn’t take on, but then become debt-bound.
In the South African and Mexican landfills I visited during the same project, patterns of informal labor were strikingly similar. But it was in India that I witnessed the most memorable experience. It meant that children were working as part of their daily lives.
Child labor is illegal in all three countries I visited. Still, I saw children as young as 5 years old working from morning until night in their respective facilities. Extreme poverty requires all family members to provide an income. In this way, exploitation spreads across generations. Instead of receiving an education, children are inheriting one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet.
But in the midst of danger and devastation, I found something unexpected: pride. Many workers talked about feeding their families and contributing to the circular economy through waste collection and recycling.
As the trucks roared up to the landfill and dumped loads of fresh garbage, adults and children alike rushed ahead, gathering beneath the avalanche of falling waste to grab something of value.
“I’m proud of my work,” one man told me. “I’m helping the community.”
As I stood next to him atop the world’s heap of garbage, I felt the weight of an even harsher truth. He is proud, but the international community that benefits from his labor largely chooses not to see him or the children working next to him.
