Johannesburg - There are people from a Vosloorus informal settlement who are so desperate not to starve that they resort to looking for food at their local recycling dump.
Every day scores of people from the Ekurhuleni community can be seen sifting through piles of recycled garbage in the hopes of finding something to eat.
Sometimes they even collect the discarded food and take it home for their families to eat.
Apart from using the east rand recycling dump to find food, many of them also sift through the recycled garbage in the hopes of finding anything of value.
This can be anything from cans, bottles, plastic, cardboard and even metal containers which they collect to sell for a small price.
Most of those who recycle the thrown out goods that they find from rummaging through piles of trash for hours on end, earn as little as R250 a week.
Despite the long hours and arduous work, this is not nearly enough to feed themselves, let alone their loved ones.
But this recycling dump is sometimes the only place for them to find items or food, as individuals and groups can be seen daily searching through the piles of trash.
Some of them are foreigners who told The Saturday Star during a visit to the site that they send the money that they get from selling the recycled goods, back home to their families.
They insist that they hardly receive any support from the government and that jobs are scarce, which leave them scouring trash in a desperate attempt to make some money.