To be Fair

Furla bags in my wastepaper bins

My friend Ling is a passionate environmentalist. Her birthday celebration 4 weeks ago turned out to be her podium for a compelling speech on recycling. Boring it might seemed, I learnt about how Ikea designers painstaking ensure every single material they use are recyclable – right from sofa to towels to plastic flowers.

I learnt that in recycling paper products, newspaper is to be separated from white paper before recycling process could begin. Envelopes from junk mails could be recycled but the windows need to be removed. Then there is plastic, the major culprit which makes up at least 20% of the average household bin (which for me is easily 50% while paper makes up the other 40%). Each day the plastic items that I throw away ranges from mineral water bottles to the packing materials supermarket uses for fruits and vegetables.

But what is the point of separating plastic from paper and white paper from colored ones when our garbage incinerator practically combined them all and burnt them off in a big torch? Well there are NGOs and voluntory groups that sets up stalls to collect recyclable items at desingated days in various suburbs. Separating them before we hand the recyclable items to them save them the effort. Indeed I know of a recycling collection van by a buddhist-run NGO every Sunday outside TMC, my neigbourhood supermarket. They in turn sell their collections to privately own recycling centers and the fees collected is channeled into charity funds.

The prospect of being able to regenerate values from discarded items intrigue me. Therefore, the next day I set up a recycling corner at my backyard.

Today , 4 weeks after the recycling corner is set up, I have stopped stuffing junk mail into my waste paper basket. They are stacked up nicely on the little stool at the recycling corner. I discover I could reuse the transparent packing boxes supermarket uses for strawberries to store tomatoes and mushrooms bought from the pasar malam.

May be I have become older , may be I have become more cost conscious, but I feel good about not wasting and contributing to good deeds. Just think about it - if 1 kg of paper fetches 1RM at the recycling station and if everyday I throw away 500g of paper comprising of junk mail , printed documents , writing paper, and I continuously do this for 20 years, it will be like draining away RM 3650 - that is good enough for me to buy 3 Furla bags ! No way I am going to throw away 3 Furla bags !

posted by Vegie @ 9:50 PM