In Cluj, Romania, children not only pick trash from the dump, they live there. For two generations, hundreds of Roma (Gypsy) people have long settled a landfill that the European Union is now closing for environmental concerns. The Roma have survived on repurposing plastic, metal, and whatever else they dig up in the dump. Some even live there, like a family of three whose shack is pieced together by “discarded pieces of other people’s lives,” says BBC reporter Lina Rozovskaya.

But now that the E.U. is closing the dump, where will the Roma go? Some say they will relocate to whatever environmentally friendly landfill the E.U. approves.

Reminds me of C. S. Lewis’s famous quote in The Weight of Glory: "We are far too easily pleased, like an ignorant child who goes on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by an offer of a holiday at the sea."

Although for them, is there even an offer of a holiday at sea?