George Steinmetz

On Earth Day, I offer a tale of recycling in two cities, from my new project!Population 10 Billion.

Garbage trucks wait to unload at a landfill built on the outskirts of Lagos, Nigeria. The 100-acre dumpsite is the largest in Africa, receiving 10,000 tons of rubbish each day. A shanty town of trash-pickers has been built atop the site by scavengers who eke out a living from recyclable scrap.

A dry ski hill covered in astroturf is the sloped roof of the waste-to-energy plant in Copenhagen, Denmark, which burns trash to generate clean power. The plant played a significant role in Copenhagen’s efforts to achieve zero carbon emissions by 2025. The plant cost $670 million and is expected to burn 400,000 tons of municipal solid waste annually.

Solar panels blanket a small mountain in Anhui, China, a part of China’s push to be the world’s leading force in renewable energy. This picture was part of a portfolio for , which just won a 2026 Communication Arts Award for Editorial Photography.

Ship breaking is the largest form of recycling on earth, and is still done the hard way on the coast of Bangladesh. Ships sold for scrap metal are driven onto the mudflats at high tide, then dismantled with blowtorches before multi-ton chunks are winched ashore for cutting into smaller pieces and sent to a local smelter. About half of the ships being broken these days are old LNG tankers like this, which no longer meet international safety and efficiency standards. The regulations for ship breakers were changed last year, requiring hard hats, helmets, cranes, and a large concrete slab to ensure that all toxic materials are disposed of properly. This has driven up costs and put most of the ship breakers out of business, as they can’t afford the US$4-5 million required. This old tannker was purchased before the law passed, and is one of the last ships to be broken the old way.