All hail the guardians of the discarded.

Waste management professionals are one of the backbones if our society and we should appreciate them- but not by comparing them to others who provide services to our society. If it’s a contest what about teachers, medical professionals, construction workers, electricians, crossing guards, and on and on and on. They should all be respected and valued. But we shouldn’t try to compare their value to each other because each performs needed services and if everyone who we could say deserved a parade got one- there’d be multiple parades every day.

As they should.

The entire point of this meme is about how you don’t hear much about waste management professionals much at all- so if we don’t talk about them much at all- that would include when we discuss other issues no? Here’s an article from 2015 I found in a quick search of the subject where female sanitation workers report uneven conditions on their field: https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/female-sanitation-workers-deal-filthy-nyc-locker-rooms-article-1.2160047

But why don’t we hear more women fighting for equality in sanitation work, where women are a huge minority of the work force? Well.... for starters- and again- asides when they strike- how often do you hear anyone talk about sanitation work? You hear lots of people complain about conditions and wages in retail work. It’s a huge topic. You hear about “poor” overworked tech workers and office drones, unpaid internships, the harsh life of farmers and field hands, but who talks about garbage collection? When is the last time you heard ANYONE you know who isn’t in the industry and has no ties through friends or relatives say: “yeah- I really hope I get this job as a garbage collector..” or “yeah, I’ve been training and preparing to transition my career to garbage collection...”

You don’t. So if you are at a party and there are two pies- a nice chocolate or berry pie, and a broccoli and fermented fish pie- and 99% of people are going after the chocolate/berry pie, and you want it too- but someone is either not distributing the pie to “people like you” evenly, or giving a smaller slice to “people like you,” are you going to direct your efforts to fighting for the pie that you actually want- or the pie that you might not have even thought about it being there and do not want? The only people who will fight over the fish pie are people who like fish pie or are starving- which isn’t anywhere near a large number is it?

I’d wager there are a whole lot of things you’ve never heard of in the world, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist- and the fact you’ve never heard of them can easily say as much about you as about them. There are foreign music artists recognized across the globe with billions of fans that if they came to a country like America- most people would have no idea who they are. Sometimes the things we aren’t aware of aren’t things that aren’t big- it’s just they are things outside of our daily lives and where we put our attention.

Who are you?