RW collection

The first Saturday of the month is coming again and it’s time for the buyer of recyclable waste (RW) to come to the campus to buy the RWs people have collected during the past month. It has been my desire to have something like this where I live so that we are all given the chance to contribute in making the environment better.

In the past I would segregate wastes but then I would still throw them at the centralized garbage collection unit. Then a big garbage truck would come to collect all of the garbage, and put them all together in the truck. Thus all my efforts to segregate them at source were for nothing. But I think maybe the collectors themselves took out the recyclables to sell outside. So they had additional income which I indirectly contributed to them. But now, we can sell directly to the buyers. It might be a bummer to these former collectors as their income has reduced. I could not imagine how much waste we can all produce, and to think that most of them can still be recycled and reused. That is why it is important to separate them at source so they do not get soiled by other wastes.

I have specific containers for them in the kitchen, such as for cardboard boxes, plastic containers, cans and bottles. The newspapers are piled up on one corner of my room. The organic waste has its own container courtesy of the 3RKH Project on campus. This gets collected every evening.

I remember when were in Canada and the UK, garbage management was so strict there and we really had to follow the system and schedules. Failure to do so meant more council tax to pay. It was a learning curve for us then but it was good and I often wonder why it could not be done here systematically. Even when snowing and conditions were not good outside we still had to stick to the schedule. And if you put the box that was not supposed to be put for that day, the garbage people would just ignore it.

Back here, it’s kinda fun also to be collecting and selling these stuff. It’s not the money really as we don’t get much from them. It’s more the satisfaction of being able to do good and give a service to the environment. It is also nice to see that the children on campus get involved. That’s right, kids should also be aware of these things as they too generate waste. And they are more energetic as well. So it helps the environment to be doing this by ourselves. Imagine the amount of waste that gets dumped into the dumpsite or landfill that could otherwise be reused and recycled.