I didn't think too much about plastic before I visited La Carpio. During my years living in the states, I regarded it as a sort of necessary evil; gatorade bottles were a part of my routine, I often forgot the reusable bags in the car, and I never said no to a straw at a restaurant. In my mind, all these plastics got "recycled," a broad, encompassing term which I used to mean "erased." But visiting the landfills in Costa Rica changes your perspective. Here, you can see what happens to the plastic bags that you get from Mega Super, to the plastic coke bottles that the restaurants give you when they don't have glass. From below, I watched as the wind caught plastic bags from atop the deposits of refuse and sent them skyward, up above the forest to drift back down to earth and settle in the river. Some plastics were caught along the broad, ten-foot fence, and were picked off one by one by a pair workers to prevent their further exodus. Until we see the hundreds of intoxicating plastic bags silhouetted in their flight against the azure sky, it is hard to comprehend the impact we are having when we leave the cloth bags in the car, grab a plastic bottle instead of drinking from the canteen, or don't say "sin pajilla" when we're ordering our drinks. Here, one of the landfill labourers stares the photographer down.