For residents of besieged Douma, the daily struggle to survive involves not just avoiding the violence that has ravaged the Syrian town, but labouring to obtain scarce basic commodities.
Facing a shortage of fuel to run generators and machinery due to the siege, former construction worker Abu Kassem set up a makeshift refinery to extract fuel from plastic waste through a process of burning them and condensing the released gas.
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A litre of benzene fuel sells for 2,200 Syrian pound ($4.70), and a litre of diesel for 2,000 Syrian pounds.
Local residents are grateful.
"When the siege began on eastern Ghouta at the end of 2013 fuel prices rose madly and we were no longer able to water crops as in the past," Abu Firas, 33, an agricultural worker in the district told Reuters. "When we started producing local fuel, and that water engines could be powered by this fuel, ... life returned to agricultural land."