Inside Mbeubeuss: Life in a Landfill

Mbeubeuss is the largest open-air landfill in Senegal and one of the biggest in Africa. Spread over 175 hectares, just outside Dakar, it receives an estimated 2,500 to 3,000 tonnes of waste every day. What happens to that waste—and who handles it—remains largely invisible to the outside world.

Thanks to an internal contact, I was recently able to access the site and document what takes place inside. Photographing in Mbeubeuss was extremely challenging: the environment is intense, with thick smoke, open fires, toxic smells, and constant movement. I couldn’t work as freely or deeply as I had hoped, as I wasn't allowed to take photos of the people or get too close to the main action sites, but what I saw was enough to leave a lasting impression.

Thousands of people live and work inside the landfill—many were born there and have never left. They build makeshift homes out of materials scavenged from the dump: fabric, plastic bottles, metal sheets.

In Senegal, like in many other countries, recycling is not typically done at the household or consumer level. Instead, it happens after the waste has been dumped, all done manually by the people working inside landfills like Mbeubeuss. As soon as new trucks arrive, workers rush to them in an effort to be the first to collect the most "valuable" materials: aluminium cans, scrap metal, glass, plastic. These items are sorted by hand and sold at the end of the day to local brokers. Most workers earn no more than $2–3 per day.

The organic waste is eaten by cows, stray dogs, and crows. But what is really left behind is what isn’t valuable or sellable: clothes. These are mainly cheap, mass-produced garments from the global fast fashion industry, often too damaged to reuse and not worth anything to local recyclers. Over time, they accumulate and cover the ground, forming dunes of fabric—soft, shifting layers that make up much of the landfill’s surface. It’s one of the most striking and symbolic parts of the site: a mountain of clothes that nobody wants, left to decompose under the sun.

What struck me most was not just the scale of the site but the human reality within it. People move through the sulphurous haze with slow, dragging steps—half-naked or wrapped in rags (stracci), their skin and clothes the colour of ash. They appear and disappear in the smoke like silhouettes, their features blurred by soot and exhaustion. The routine of picking through waste for hours on end seems to strip away individuality, creating an unsettling sense of de-humanisation.

This project is about documenting a reality that exists out of sight and prompting reflection on the wider systems of consumption—especially the fast-fashion cycle—that feed places like Mbeubeuss. My aim is to show, to inform and to invite viewers to confront the hidden consequences of what we throw away.