A dustbin dance of the desperates

A pensioner looks at customers who use an ATM as she sits outside a bank in Athens. Photo / AP

Piled high with rubbish congealing in the summer heat, municipal dustbin R21 on Athens' Sofokleous St does not look or smell like a treasure trove.

But for Greece's growing army of dustbin scavengers, its deposits of rubbish from nearby stores make it a regular point of call.

"Sometimes I'll find scrap metal that I can sell, although if I see something that looks reasonably safe to eat, I'll take it," said Nikos Polonos, 55, who lost his job as a construction worker three years ago, when Greece's building boom dried up. "Other times you might find paper, cans and bottles that you can get money for if you take them back to the shops for recycling."

One reason for R21's popularity is because it is just down the road from a church soup kitchen.

But many of those who now forage each day are ordinary working people - or were, at least, until Greece's economic meltdown shot unemployment up to 25 per cent.

Panos Karamanlikis, a volunteer at the soup kitchen, says the numbers of scavengers have increased by two or three times since 2011 alone. "A lot of them are normal people from normal homes," said Karamanlikis, who lost his own job in 2006. "They will go out and look for cigarette stubs on the streets, tin cans to recycle, anything."