Budapest’s city council, together with waste management service FKF, annually assigns a period to each of the 23 districts when inhabitants can put their unwanted belongings on their doorstep and have them ready to be picked up on the next day.
This is the so-called lomtalanítás (pronounced “lom-tah-lah-ni-taash”). It only took me an hour to get the pronunciation right, and my Hungarian colleagues agreed that for a lack of better words, “trash pick-up day” would be the most suitable translation.
I immediately became attracted to lomtalanítás and the side events that revolve around it. I started to have questions about what I'd seen, and I shared these with the people around me. It turns out that there are a lot of contrasting opinions.To understand the background connected to these photographs I suggest you to read this article.
It contains facts, my personal conclusions, and some of the questions that I've asked myself while visiting lomtalanítás in the period of 2014-2019.
In the last week of February a booklet containing photographs and the Hungarian version of this article was available at cultural and alternative venues throughout Budapest, with the goal to stimulate dialogue.
A new version of this booklet is available for purchase in the section 'My shop'.