Yesterday, I did some ‘clean-up’ of my place. Basically, I gathered all the mineral bottles into a few boxes to be ready for the transfer back to my village, and smashed my collection of aluminium cans to make space for more cans.
- Some of the cans which have just undergone ‘flattening’.
When I was 14, I used to collect sacks of aluminium cans, old newspapers and glass bottles. These items would be sold to local recycle vendors for some income to fund my next gadget purchase, such as the Walkman I always wanted. My parents encouraged me, and I always had this sense of pleasure every time I hit my target and was able to buy what I wanted.
Nowadays, I just collect it for the sake of keeping the environment cleaner, and reduce pollution despite the fact that this habit of mine does take up some space in my house. The price of these recyclable items has decreased, but they are still a worthy sell considering I’d end up throwing them away anyway.
However, after yesterdays clean-up, i noticed how much room I’ve taken up just for keeping this items. It does seem like a waste of space, and not worth the effort considering that the sell value would be less than RM10 after nearly 4 years collecting the items.
Should I continue collecting, or should I just take things the easy way and donate it to the rubbish bin?