The Waste Land
Sitting outside the recycling facility that houses her business and family, Kim Mouy, 51, who also goes by Mae Kamouy, watches over her workers as they churn through Phnom Penh’s trash.
She is perched upon a wooden stump opposite an unstable heap of black plastic – car dashboards, fan casing, old televisions, speakers – selecting a piece and cracking it with a mallet to split apart any metal or glass still attached.
In the house sits other kinds of collected waste separated into piles: colourfully woven plastics neatly packaged in sacks ready to be shipped out, metal scraps still waiting to be sorted. In one corner, two men toss plastic rice bags into a machine that presses the bags into blocks.
Evie Breese and Thim Rachna
