Orchestra from “Landfill Harmonic” fame performs at Marin County recycler’s community event

By Molly McCrea

Last weekend, a special performance unfolded in Central San Rafael. The location was unusual: it’s where collection bins full of waste, recycling and compost are brought.

The occasion was the 10th Annual Customer Appreciation Day at Marin Sanitary Service, featuring the Recycled Orchestra of Cateura (Orquesta de Instrumentos Reciclados de Cateura). The orchestra is a group of young musicians from an impoverished community in Paraguay located around a landfill, performing with musical instruments made entirely from trash salvaged from the landfill.

Their ensemble includes saxophones crafted from water pipes, bottle caps, and coins; violins fashioned from paint cans, pizza trays, and utensils; and a standup bass, created from an oil drum. The group’s exploits were celebrated in the award-winning documentary, “Landfill Harmonic.”

The band’s motto says it all: “The world brings us garbage, and we send back music,” said Favio Chavez, founder and director of the orchestra, through an interpreter.

Sunday’s celebration also involved tours of the waste and recycling facility, free compost giveaway, document shredding, and hands-on activities.

“It’s our opportunity to say thank you to the community for having us be their community hauler and recycler,” said Marin Sanitary Services CEO Justin Wilcox.

Dozens of community members showed up for the event, including many families with kids.

The day started with a crowd pleaser: big, rumbling garbage trucks, demonstrating how they handle trash and recycling bins in a cacophony of clanking metal and glass. The younger members of the audience were thrilled.

“He loves recycling trucks, and trash trucks and things like that,” explained Claire, mother of 16-month-old Dominic.

The mother of 2-year-old Wes and 5-year-old Frankie said her kids were equally entranced.

 “I’m a boy mom with two big, big fans of garbage trucks,” said their mom, Kendra. “So, we had to come see them in real life.”

Following the truck prelude, the headliners from Paraguay hit the stage. Juan Carlos Arauz of the nonprofit organization E3: Education, Excellence, and Equity helped to facilitate their trip. Arauz interpreted for Chavez when CBS News Bay Area asked the orchestra’s founder if he had hope for future generations.

“We believe not only in hope but that in the children that we work with,” replied Chavez. “And we do these performances. That it brings hope for everyone else in the world.”

In a special booth at the event, children were encouraged to make their own musical instruments out of discarded materials intended for landfills. The kids got creative: there were a few rubber-band guitars, and all kinds of musical shakers that were made from cans, cardboard, beans, shells, and beads.

Frankie and his mom made an unusual tambourine, using a plastic wheel, rubber bands, buttons, and a discarded wooden fish.

The activity thrilled those in the band.

“People are going to start to transform how they think about garbage, that really there might be a treasure in there without understanding and realizing what is possible,” said Chavez.

The hope is that when it comes to trash, future generations will be inspired by their imaginations, creativity, and love for the planet, and play a different tune.