These trash pickers used to have miserable jobs. Now they run their own recycling cooperative.

After his father died when he was only a teenager, Yassine Mazzout started working nights at the landfill next to his home near Morocco’s capital Rabat, salvaging items that could be recycled or sold from the mountain of filth. “At 15, I should have spent my evenings playing with other kids,” said Mazzout. “But I spent…