![scavengers](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8Ji_wHPwTbqd8gopquHcnSK1dZ2Rb9lACc2akgkhAWVNsBK1EdAwH9ZomTcKNqbqca0Ye_k9iKO06nfpwgxKpPlR3FcU19A9sW8SI0u828d4R7YVku21LB1tYCkBOPDmtEnKHWXKEZrmV/s400/dustheap.gif)
The Victorian dust-heap has long been of interest to scholars through it's literary place in Charles Dickens's Our Mutual Friend. We are now very keen in recycling as a society, of course, and the Victorian system of rubbish-sifting seems very "green" to modern readers, albeit tainted by the poverty-stricken lives of the scavengers involved. These days, of course, we outsource some of our scavenge-able waste to third-world countries, where they can do our scavenging/recycling for us, in conditions not dissimilar to those described herein, in an 1850s piece from Household Words, to which I've added other links on the subject.