Landfill Harmonic: An Orchestra Built From Trash in Paraguay

Cateura is a settlement of roughly 2,500 families who make their living picking through the trash of Paraguay's biggest landfill; in 2012, environmental technician Favio Chávez began teaching local children music using instruments handcrafted from recycled scrap — oil drums, forks, pipes and X-ray film. What started as a handful of students became a free community music school that today teaches hundreds of children weekly, keeping them off the streets and out of the landfill. The orchestra's story was told in the 2015 documentary Landfill Harmonic, and the young musicians have since performed alongside Metallica, Megadeth and Stevie Wonder and toured stages worldwide.