Recycling in Singapore

In Singapore, recycling takes on a different form. Having been overseas before, I have always been impressed with their efforts at recycling. Well, in Singapore, there are recycling bins around. But I don't really think that has been particularly effective as I have witnessed many times people actually "looting" these recycling bins for their own personal gains. I guess they must have sold the drink bottles and cans to the recycling companies directly to earn some extra cash.

Anyway, I heard the karang guni man as he came over to my block today. There are lots of these karang guni man plying their trade at my block and it seems that they are coming almost everyday. The karang guni man is basically a person who works for one of these small recycling companies that collects old newspapers, electronics, and whatever you can think of. Anyway, I wrote about the karang guni man sometime back. I guess those people who stay in private apartments or condominiums in Singapore perhaps never get a chance to meet one.

Today, I sold 5 kg of newspapers to the karang guni man. That earned me a small tidy sum of 50 cents. Not bad I must say.

Just doing my part for recycling and I get to earn money at the same time. But there is a question that I have. If the recycling man pays me 10cents for 1 kg of old newspapers, I wonder how much he actually earns from re-selling it. Anybody knows?