Brown And Black Lungs
a multi-million-dollar green recycling facility. not robotics. not AI. every single person on that line was a worker of colour.
I recently took a tour of Sonoma County’s top recycling facility.
I walked in expecting a futuristic Jetsons scene — conveyor belts, scanners, machines, robotics. And yes, the machines were there. But the truth was louder than any machinery.
Every. Single. Person. Standing. On. That. Line. Was. A. Worker of Color.
They were manually pulling and sorting trash, breaking apart contaminated waste, removing plastic by hand, inhaling fumes, repeating the same motion thousands of times a day, fixing everyone else’s “bad recycling.”
Even in a multi-million-dollar green facility, the system still runs on brown and Black lungs.
Not robotics. Not AI. Not green innovation. Human bodies.
People love saying, “America doesn’t make things anymore.” But it does. It makes mountains of trash. Halloween. Valentine’s. Christmas. Thanksgiving. And America expects people of color to clean it.
This is not a glitch. Not accidental. It is the formula.
Anywhere there is dirt, fumes, chemicals, repetitive strain, heat, exhaustion, bodily risk, low prestige… you will find POC labor.
And nowhere close will you find the people who benefit the most from that work.