Young musicians from the village of Cateura, Paraguay, a town of 2,500 families that make a living by mining the 1,500 tons of solid waste daily dumped in a local landfill, have started making musical instruments from the debris.

Favio Chávez, an ecological technician and trained musician, was inspired to teach the local children to play music in an orchestra. He says, “The world sends us garbage, we send back music.” A documentary, Landfill Harmonic, is in production and a 30-member Recycled Orchestra has performed in Argentina, Brazil and Germany.

The message is that like other natural resources, children living in poverty have redeeming value and should not be deemed worthless.

Watch videos at Tinyurl.com/ChavezOrchestra and Facebook.com/landfillharmonicmovie.