(263) Recycling

When I  told friends and acquaintances that I recycle, sometimes I end up with a car load of all kinds of everything. There was this old lady who gave us more than fifty brown bottles which she kept from her husband's consumption of bee propolis.

It is a good thing that I live near a recycling station. On the way back to where I live, I would unload all the glass bottles. The next time she gave us two electrical gadgets. My son who at one glance could tell what the items were, said that there were one VCD player and one DVD player. And so that was that. I was surprised as I remember the old lady said she had an old VCD player that still worked and that she would pack all the clothes that her daughters and grand children left in her house. So I thought, maybe her daughter bought a new DVD player a few days back. Then it is natural that she would want to get rid of the old one. We unloaded the two electrical items as usual. I took the clothes home to sort. Our recycling centre was run by a family who collects items to convert to cash for disaster relief.

Two weeks down the line, I had a frantic call from the old lady saying that her daughter could not find the latter's projector. The former was calm enough to tell me that she believed that projector was probably overseas. Only her daughter had forgotten where it was. Just in case we recycled an expensive projector, I paid a special visit to our recycling partner. After listening to what happens to our items after it left the home centre, I went back to find out more details of the missing item.

To facilitate communication, I sms the recycling centre's hand phone number to the recycling party and vice versa. Then I put the matter out of my mind. Three days later, a happy call came telling us that the old lady was right, the missing projector was located in a South East Asian country. Her daughter had forgotten that she left it in a business associate's house the last visit three months ago. I immediately informed my recycling partner the good news. We both learned a lesson from the incident. Should there be an expensive item given, we would keep it for a period and confirm that it was meant to be given away.