These elderly people in Singapore are among 11.8% of the total resident population of citizens aged 65 years and above.Department of Statistics, (2015).  

 

They wake up early in the morning with their pushcarts from their homes at around 5am. They start collecting cardboard from shops, near bins and alleyways along Serangoon Road. The cardboard are packaging waste from the shops that purchase daily produce and goods. 

 

They journey along the road, picking up more cardboard on the way to their collection point at Clive Street. At the collection point, they will exchange their cardboard with the recycling collectors and load it up to the large trucks to be transported to the recycling plants like ST PAPER RESOURCES. 

The cardboard trades at 9/ cents per kg. The transport companies then will trade the collected cardboard to the recycling factories for around 18 cents per kg.  The daily average cardboard collected by these elderly per person is a whooping 400kg.

This translates to around $40 of earnings daily for them. This figure is a very rough estimate and there is significant variability among the elderly on their daily takings.

There are also those who collect aluminium cans and glass bottles to trade them as well. They fetch a higher price at $1/kg for aluminium cans.

About 5-7 tonnes of cardboard is collected daily and sent to the recycling facilities. In a year, this amounts to 2555 tonnes of cardboard being recycled by the efforts of these elderly.

Here’s a video for you to see them in action! Take note of all the aspects mentioned above!

 

So, how much do you recycle?

Disclaimer.

*The information and estimates are based on a local study by Koh Cheng Jun and his team from the Youth Corps Singapore in 2015. Their study involved onsite observations and interviews on these elderly for a period of 2 months. They produced a Needs Analysis Report submitted to the Ministry of Social and Family Development.

Here’s a link to their project https://www.youthcorps.sg/Public/ViewProject/398