Recycle

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These days the publicity on recycling has become aggressive.

With the amount of information that is out there, there’s no excuse to get it wrong.

Even children have been programmed to make you feel guilty if you throw out something recyclable with the normal trash.

However, I often question myself at the efficiency of the whole system seeing as I still see very few products with the label indicating that it was made from recycled material.Where are the recycled goods going and which companies are making use this?

I’ve heard rumours that not all the trash we put in the recycling bins is actually being recycled so I’m curious to how exactly is our effort being put to good use.

Being firm believers and recycling devotees at home, we own a relatively large trashcan that consists of three bins to facilitate the separating and see to it that our recycling duty is done – we do this in belief that we’re making a difference to help the environment.

It is this desire and belief that persuaded us to start recycling old appliances as well.

Worten has been advertising that everyone should hand in their old appliances at any of their stores to be properly disposed of and recycled.

After buying a new keyboard for our computer we decided that the right thing to do was hand in the old one at a Worten store and so we took it with us to Vasco da Gama.

There are no bins or advertising in the store to where this equipment should be handed in.

I asked one of the attendants to refer-me to where I should drop off the old equipment and was told that I should report to the complaints counter.

If perhaps the complaints counter was empty that day, I wouldn’t feel the need to write this post but as is normal in a big store such as Worten, the counter was full!

I took a peek at the next ticket and realised that if I was to take one I’d have to wait behind approximately 10 people in front of me.

I put on my best smile and apologetically interrupted one of the girls behind the counter.

“I´m sorry, I´m not here to complain and I only want to hand in my old keyboard so could I just leave this here with you”

It´s not like I had forms to fill out! And yet I was told very sympathetically that i´d have to take a ticket and wait in line.

Are you kidding me?!

Instead of throwing it out with the normal trash, I make the effort of bringing my old equipment to the store so that it can be recycled and I have to wait in a long complaints line?!

I was about to make my way to the nearest trashcan when my better half came with a better idea.

He took the keyboard from my hands put it on top of the complaints counter and retorted: “Here you go, I’m leaving this keyboard here – if you want to you can recycle it and if you don’t want to, go ahead and throw it out with the trash.”

We left satisfied that we’d done our public duty.