Recycling is Fun!

A second visit to the Recycling Centre materialised in January, thanks to Choulyin who got us all excited over picking through other peoples' waste.

Here are accounts of the experience by Carinne, the 'experienced one' and Lisa, the 'newbie'. Don't underestimate the fun in rubbish!

Carrine writes:

This is my second time helping at the pre-recycling center. "Pre" being that they do not recycle the stuff there itself. They only collect the items and sort them according to their substance. You know, like ‘brown brown glass, paper blue blue, orange for plastic, aluminum and steel cans too’.

We were there to do the sorting part. It was fun. We laughed, we talked, we joked, we sweat and we had fun. The most important thing is, we helped Uncle Chan clear the WHOLE place. See the before and after picture and you will know what I mean by clear. Uncle Chan is a volunteer like us if I’m not mistaken. He’s our sorting Sifu.

Anyway, it was a good three hours spent. Hope there will be more of us the next time.

Lisa writes:

23^rd January 2010 was my first time stepping into a recycling centre. I was very excited because I’ve never been to any recycling centre before. This was my first time sorting out recycling items and I thought it would be easy to handle.

When I first entered the centre, I was shocked to see different kinds of recycling items lying on the ground. The place was all messed up. After getting instructions by Pui Yi ( who invited me and my friends to the recycling centre), all of us start sorting out all the recyclable items into different boxes.

All the cardboards and coloured papers into one box, plastics into another box and etc. At first I thought doing all these would be easy and we can settle everything fast but I was wrong! We have to carefully sort out those things because some of the recyclable things ( which we thought can be recycled) cannot be recycled, so we have to throw them into another box.

I spent 2 hours at the centre enjoying myself, sorting out the recyclable items with my friends. It was very tiring as I kept myself busy sorting out the items. I actually learned a lot. I got to know what kind of plastic can be recycled and what can be reused. I also realised that we, human beings, don’t know how to save and we waste a lot!

I think not many people actually go to recycling centres to help sort the recycling items. It is very sad to hear that because there's a lot of work to do by just sorting! It is not easy as we have to open up people trash and pick out the recyclables. However, it was really fun and I felt satisfied after clearing up the recycling centre! This experience lightened up my day and it's well worth remembering and shared with my friends.

Thanks Pui Yi!!