More recycling

I am so pleased to say that the recycling company came to take away our bag of stuff of recycles - full of cardboard, a chipped porcelain mug, some cleaned out tins, some glass jars, a couple of large plastic bottles and an assortment of paper from the unsolicited mail that we get in our letterbox.

I guess that phonecall worked and they are now more vigilant in their collection. We will wait and see how long they can keep this going.

Recycling IV

Yah - this bee is still in my bonnet about recycling!

Years ago, when I was a student in England - we recycled everything where possible. I guess this is where I caught the bug - plus the Malaysia kedekut genes in my blood.

The rubbish collection in our area was done once a week - on Mondays. For the whole week you would wonder what we did with all the rubbish we generated. Please note - I am English in my vocabulary. I use the work RUBBISH not GARBAGE - HH is American in his vocabulary!!

Our food waste would be "gobbled" by a food gobber in the kitchen. We would put in all the bones and other strange food waste that we could not send to the compost bin.

The compost bin would be the recipient of our vegetable and fruit peeling and the egg shells, ground coffee, tea leaves, grass and what have you that could go into the compost bin. This wonderful bin would then make wonderful humus for us to use in our garden after some time tumbling around in a warm area.

There was a glass bank down the road in the large carpark - we would sort all our glass into clear, green and brown piles. Then take a walk to the glass bank and have great fun chucking in the bottles and hear the glass shattering. Quite good for taking our your anger on someone! :D

Newspapers would go paper bank for recycling as well.

We didn't have to recycle milk cartons because we had milk delivery - we left the glass bottles outside on our doorstep and the milkman exchanges it with another bottle of milk.

All those TetraPak containers could be recycled, so we would rinse these out and put them in a pile for recycling as well. Same for the cardboard boxes. There wasn't too much styrofoam to recycle because it wasn't much in use.

In fact I have made it a policy not to cart rubbish home to throw if I can help it these days in Singapore - I will say NO to boxes for shoes if necessary, throw out the uncessary packaging material before I bring it home.

Every week, we would have something for recycling and I guess the bug stayed!

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Recycle III

I have this bee in my bonnet about recycling lately so I figured I might as well get the whole thing out of my system.

In our HDB estate, the recycle company comes around every two weeks on Mondays. So Monday 1 June was the designated recycle day.

In the two week lag time, I collect all our disposed plastics, glass, metals and cans, all sorts of paper, styrofoam and put these into our recycling bag The recycling bag also says that they will collect old clothes, toys, books and electrical items.

So I have put all these items aside for the recycling company in the so many years that they have been collecting such stuff in our estate. We would collect the newspapers for the recycling company instead of waiting for the karung guni man who comes around to BUY the papers from us.

Anyway, this is the thing that has made me really cross with our recycling company - they didn't come around on the designated day a couple of times and our bags were left along the corridor to wait for them. They did this in May when they came around only once.

So this time I was so cross with them that I called them on Tuesday to demand an explanation for their tardiness in following the schedule. The girl who answered the phone had the cheek to say that I put out the bag too late after the guy had come around. I informed me that the bag would be put out on Sunday night, just in case we forget on Monday morning before 8 am when we leave for the office.

Anyway, if the guy had come around he would have left another bag for the next collection. There was no bag!

Anyway after my feedback on collection, they came and collected the bag yesterday. I will be monitoring their activities and will keep you updated.

Great! Now that I've got this off my chest I will have my tiramisu dessert as a reward.

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Recycling II

I just became the latest victim of electronic waste through no fault of mine. I am well known for my "kedekut" ways or mad recycling efforts, so this is really disappointing for me.

My VOIP service provider announced that it would be terminating services from 31 May 2009. When I subscribed to their service, the company provided me with an ATA (Analog Telephone Adaptor) box so that I would be able to use a regular old fashioned analog phone over the internet connection.

Now that this service has been terminated, I am stuck with an ATA box that is in perfectly good working condition but cannot be used. So why is this considered electronic waste? THE BOX IS LOCKED by the service provider.

I called a couple of service providers to ask about their service and asked it I could reuse the box. I get the same answer - Sorry, madam. You are not able to reuse your ATA box, it is locked by the original service provider. You will have to buy a new one from us or pay us $xx for the use of software internet phone.

Sigh! What a bloody waste!

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