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?

Recycling the Singapore Way - Karang Guni

Very often, we get to hear the sounds of the beeping of a bicycle-like horn around various HDB estates in Singapore. The unmistakable sound of that horn is actually the "recycling" man making his rounds around the blocks to collect any old newspapers, household gadgets or simply anything that can be recycled. We call them the Karang Guni man though I am not certain what it means exactly in Malay. All I know is that if you offer him your old newspapers, he will offer you some loose change based on the weight of the old newspapers you have sold him.

Just recently, I heard the sound of the karang guni man's horn beeping across the corridor and managed to catch his attention that I had some old newspapers that I wanted to "sell" him. In the past few months, the wife had been throwing away the old newspapers down the rubbish chute because she had no idea what to do with them.

After bringing out all the newspapers, the man tied them up with a pink rafia string and proceeded to weigh them. He announced it as "8 Kilos" and then handed me 80 cents, explaining that I get 10 cents for each kilo of newspapers.

What he did next was most unexpected. He whipped out a name card from his wallet and handed it over to me. He told me that I could call the number on that name card whenever I had something that I wanted to get rid off.

Part of the name card reads:

Specialise in collection of Old Clothing, Used/defective Home Appliances, Television, Mobile Phone, Old News Paper and Others. We also provide Removal & Transportation services.

A change of the times and definitely Uniquely Singapore! Shows how much the karang guni man has progressed since yester year.