Garbage girl

"I'm very proud to be the dumb blonde who models garbage," declares Atar Friedman. Friedman, the face of the local authorities' garbage sorting project, is a far cry from the stereotypical hard-knock, sweaty and exhausted garbageman. The photographs of her, showing her searching in garbage cans or riding on the back of a garbage truck, are part of the glamorous image now being associated with recycling and modeling and that have already earned her the name, "the garbage model."

At no point during the conversation with her is it clear where Friedman ends and the garbage begins and vice versa. For her, everything is interconnected, cleaning is the beginning of garbage and vice versa, nothing is as it appears; the disgusting and the revolting, the tempting and the provocative, are one entity.

	Atar Friedman.
	Photo by: Ayala Tal

She is 33. At the age of 5, she and her family were evacuated from Yamit in the Sinai.

She grew up in Hofit, flunked out of an Air Force training course, got a bachelor's degree in biology and a master's degree in ecology, both with honors, and now lives in Tel Aviv's Neveh Tzedek quarter and is in a relationship with a female partner.

Throughout our entire conversation, we sit near her municipal compost bin.

Friedman initially has a hard time specifying the moment when she and her career were attached to waste. Perhaps, she speculates, it started during her childhood, when she preferred animals and nature over people.

Perhaps it was in the flight training course, when she realized that even though she was an excellent pilot, she wouldn't cut it in the course. Perhaps it was during her master's studies when she built a water filtering system and checked how the pollution of the streams and rivers affects the sea.

Perhaps it was when she started working for a company that builds gray water systems, perhaps when she was chosen to two years ago to host a program on Channel 8, "Tzomet Drakhim" (Crossroads ), in which she traveled around the country visiting "green" ventures.

"As part of hosting 'Tzomet Drakhim' in 2008, I participated in a compost course given by Tammy Tzeri as part of the 'Etz Ba'ir' (Tree in the City ) project in Tel Aviv," she says. "As part of the course, we were asked to bring in garbage from our home, and so it happened that in one moment I understood what bothered me about everything I had done until that point, including the effort focused on biology. It was the moment when I realized how alienated and superficial the way we live and work is. The proximity to the compost made me look inward, not just deep into the waste, but also deep into my lifestyle. That is what caused me to make a commitment."

The theory in short: Whoever makes compost, turning waste into earth, easily understands how people, mostly Westerners who consider themselves "clean," are destroying open spaces and filling the world with harmful substances, especially methane.

Whoever makes compost understands how we choke birds and fish with discarded plastic bags; how bottle caps get stuck in the throats of helpless birds.

"The moment I understood compost," says Friedman, "I understood everything, mostly how crazy it is to ignore the terrible damage we are creating. Suddenly everything fell into place like a giant puzzle, because I also saw myself, my health, within this great system. How? Whoever deals with compost and looks at it no longer wants to bring packaging into his home and understands why food whose leftovers cannot be thrown into the composter is also food that no one wants to and should not place in his body."

Friedman's day revolves around garbage: She advises companies that want to go green, links companies that provide green services and those who are seeking them, is involved in green conferences of all kinds, rebukes people who toss litter on the street, even a cigarette butt, threatens when necessary, takes with all due seriousness the job of "the face of waste" and presents a program on Israel Radio that is mostly answering listeners' questions on green issues.

Saving the world with topsoil

The positive spirit emanating from Friedman is also reflected in the way she summarizes the role of compost in the world: "Compost is the topsoil of the earth; it is a layer of quality ground in the earth's membrane which holds the water and makes it possible to grip the soil. Without topsoil there are sandstorms, floods, aridity and recurring fires as in the one in the Carmel. Each year, man causes a 12 centimeter decrease in topsoil due to conventional farming, instead of organic farming, which does not restore the compost to the ground. A three centimeter layer of topsoil around the world takes 500 years to be created naturally.

Compost, Friedman believes, should enchant every person: "Everyone, regardless of socio-economic background, in every place, wants to change and improve things. Compost is a great solution for everybody and on every level: After all, everyone is fed up with the leaky and polluting plastic bags. And for those who sort waste and make compost, there are now polluting bags. Everyone is fed up with running every day with the garbage bags and looking for a place to dump them. Those who sort their garbage and make compost have a lot less garbage. That's why I go from house to house and explain to people that Israel is in second place, after the United States, in its per capita garbage creation: disgusting. I manage to explain to them that garbage is not something disgusting because it is exactly the same substance that a minute ago was on our plate and seemed the most enticing."