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Monday, October 02, 2006

Karang Guni Man - That's what the rag man is called.

Do you recycle your newspapers, plastic, clothes? Yes, most people will send old clothes to the Salvation Army bins. For paper, plastic, etc, you might have the local council collecting them by putting them in special bins or bags.

In Singapore and Malaysia, there's always this Karang Guni man. (Rag and Bone Man) For our home, every other weekend, there would be this man who would be shouting Karang Guni or Siu Gu Boh Zhua (Colleting old newspaper in Hokkien, a Chinese dialect) If you have clothes, newpaper etc to sell, just shout back whatever they shout. They will stop and you can pass what "junk" you have to them. Newspaper cost 7 cents a kilo.

This picture is the collection van that has collected all the "junk" for the day.



Just last week, my sis sold 90kg (according to the weighing machine of the karang guni man) of old newspaper from our home. Haha. WHAT? you said, yeah, that's how much newspaper we have in our home. It's around 2 months worth of newspaper. The money went to a local charity :-)

5 comments:

kaa said...

recycling is quite different here. people recycle on their own intitative and are not paid for it. We have to dispose of our rubbish according to biowaste, cardboard, newspapers and general rubbish. no fines if we dont do it but most finnish people jus do it. a way of life for them.

~tanty~ said...

Wow, 90 kg? That is a lot. Anyway, recycling is a good system.

Lisi said...

that's absolutely a good thing, both the charity donation and recycling...

Jing said...

:)
Yes, here we can see that kind man "Karang Guni man". Here we call them "shi1 huang1 ren2 " (means junkman).
And the small difference is that they don't shout,just tinkle a bell to let people know he is coming~~~
nice photo for sharing~~~
:D
..Jing

Unknown said...

Kaa, it will take some time before everyone recycle like the Finnish do. But there are people who make a living going around collecting paper etc and selling them to the recyclers.

Tanty, my sis said I made a mistake. It's 90 kg because it is 6 months worth of newspapers, not 2 months.

Lisi, there are many school projects that raise money by going around to houses to collect newspaper and old clothes to be recycled. We usually get notice of their efforts via notices they leave on our doors, so we usually leave it for them.

Jing, tinkle bells sounds so nice. Most of them shout, some use a radio to blast out their own shouts. Others use a horn that goes "pee por pee por". haha...