Waste Management

I need help finding a place to begin.

With Earth Day coming up soon, I'd really like to do a trash cleanup in my community with my students. However, this proposal carries countless obstacles.

My town doesn't have a waste management service. People are responsible for disposing of their own trash, burning it or adding it to mountains of waste all over the countryside.

If I were to have a "trash cleanup", what would we be doing other than moving trash from one place to another? Burning it is an open welcome to carcinogens. Craft projects would be fun, but I don't think the parents of the youth I deal with would be too crazy about birdhouses made from plastic bottles. When I asked a relative about the problem she said that the community does have a dump, but there hasn't been a service for years because the government can't finance the trucks.



What is my place in addressing this problem? It's massive, requires manpower, and is political. And yet, I don't think I can consciously ignore it. If you know of anyone or have any suggestions for what can be done and how to organize around this please let me know. I don't even know how to concisely define the problem. I've tried searching waste management, Ukraine + trash, recycling programs... but can't quite grasp a proper case study.