Cash from the trash

CEBU, Philippines – Many things that would normally be considered waste can actually have other good uses. Instead of throwing them away, they can be collected, processed and re-used - either reclaimed for their original purpose or used to make new products.

The recycling or re-use of trash materials offers many benefits. It conserves natural resources, saves energy, reduces the overall garbage volume and decreases environmental pollution. Also, it can be a good source of income.

In big cities like Cebu, trash provides livelihood to thousands of people. A man along the city's Magallanes Street has a flourishing business making beautiful bird cages using grilles of broken-down electric fans. He claims earning more from this than from his previous job in a factory. Over at the Carbon Market there's a line of stalls that sell used glass and plastic jars. They supply the requirements of small home businesses, such as makers of homemade fruit preserves and processed-fish products.

Moreover, while scavengers roaming around our neighborhoods are quite a sad sight, imagine how much more piteous their situation would be without our household junks giving them livelihood. Giving away our leftovers may not be exactly a charitable deed, but for us who cannot give anything more, that might be good enough. It is enough, at least, to keep the scavengers from much worse indigence.

Some neighborhoods have recycling programs that organize a systematic collection of used items from member households. They then process it, segregating re-usable items like ceramic and glass wares, old books and magazines, and hold regular rummage sales of salvaged stuff. The cash proceeds are often used to put up a cooperative store or help finance other beneficial community projects.

It's true that one man's garbage can be another's fortune. A company in Britain grew out of this idea. Its founder, an agricultural technologist with experience in plastics engineering, experimented with scrap rubber and plastic products. The result is an array of bright new products. Plastic cups are turned into rulers, used car tires into pencil cases and computer mousepads, and plastic from broken-down appliances into pens.

Initially, the company's products appealed only to the ecologically-conscious customers. But statements such as "I used to be a car tire" or "We used to be computer printers" inscribed on the items soon caught the attention of more people. The products now attract a wide cross-section of the general market.

The company, aptly called Remarkable, has since grown and won awards from environmental groups as well as the British government. Its annual income has recently reached 2.5 billion dollars; its growth rate a remarkable 30 percent a year. Its products are now carried not only by special novelty retailers but also by big department stores in many countries.

The company has since relocated to a new, bigger factory, quadrupling its research and manufacturing space. Here, workers are busy converting refrigerator casings into fridge magnets, car bodies into key holders, and used baby diapers into document folders. Designers, at the same time, are already thinking up other ways for converting their own recycled products into something else useful, once these will have been used and discarded by consumers.

The world's resources may have all been originally designed for continual use and re-use or recycling. The sediments from household septic tanks, for instance, can be a rich source of plant fertilizer. Waste kitchen leftovers can be fed to hogs, which produce wastes that can in turn be tapped to produce bio-gas.

So, even when you're sure to have had thoroughly squeezed a thing of its last worth, consider that others might still find good uses for it. Before throwing anything to the garbage bin, think that there might be someone out there who needs it. Often there is. And that person might just be willing to give good cash for your trash.