Recycling at major malls

Waste is an important topic for me, especially after having been exposed to a global retail and consumer environment that is just flooded with so much... stuff. Nice stuff, sometimes even useful stuff, but it all boils down to a lot of new stuff made from new materials/resources. (Click here for a video on stuff by a former Greenpeace activist).

In the meantime, we are still burdened by the problem of how to discard all the old stuff (as well as the additional stuff generated to create the new stuff).

So... what to do with all your garbage? Maybe you or your company has a friendly neighborhood garbage collector, who simply asks you to segregate paper from plastic from wet garbage. However, this garbage ends up in landfills, plus there are those items that can be confusing, like styrofoam or batteries. So if we prefer to take control of where our garbage goes, we can go directly to recyclers, do the environment a favor while making some petty cash on the side, and take everything directly to a... mall??

Last year, the SM and Ayala megagroups started the following recycling programs:

SM's Trash to Cash (sponsored by the DENR, in partnership with the Philippine Business for the Environment)

Scheduled on every first Saturday of the month, from 8am to 2pm, this waste market is a venue for selling or trading your disposables. This is an initiative aligned with SM's goal of recycling 100% of recyclable products.

According to this blog, these are what you can bring:

Items you can trade:

• Scrap paper and cardboard - for bathroom tissue, table napkins, bond paper and notebooks.
• Empty ink and toner cartridge - for quality remanufactured ones
• Plastic bottles and plastic scraps - for plastic household items like hangers, basins and pails
• Used lead batteries (from cars, UPS and voltage regulators) - for car check-up coupons

Items you can sell:

• Used PET bottles (containers of softdrinks and mineral water bottles)
• Aluminum and tin cans
• Junk electrical appliance, specially computer monitors

Items you can just drop off:

• Polystyrene
• Styrofoam
• Junk cellphones and cellphone batteries

To check out a personal testimony of an SM Trash to Cash experience, click here.

Venue: Open parking lots of =31 different SM Supermalls nationwide.

Accredited local business partners include:

• Tibal Scrap Depot
• Sindayen’s Junk Shop
• Inkline Trading
• Glory Resource Scrap Shop

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Ayala Recyclables Fair (formerly the Waste Market)

Hosted every Friday 8am-3pm in different venues as well as every quarter (January, April, July, October) by the NUVALI development (a joint eco-project between AyalaLand & the Yulos in Laguna) as one part of NUVALI's more comprehensive waste management program, the Recyclables Fair is a market where recyclers "set up shop," ready to purchase your segregated garbage.

According to the AyalaLand website, NUVALI recommends that the following items be bundled together:

1. Ink and toner cartridges
2. Paper and carton products such as used bond/pad paper,notepads, newspaper, books, magazines, directories, boxes or milk cartons
3. Used lead-acid battery
4. Plastic and metal products such as bottles, cans, or pipes
5. E-waste (electronic waste) such as CDs, DVDs, old home or office appliances.

Tetra Pak milk and juice cartons have been reccently added to this list.

Once these items have been bundled together, all one has to do is go over to the fair site or to NUVALI as early as 8:00 am on fair day and follow these simple steps:

1. Load recyclables in your vehicle and proceed to NUVALI (or any fair site).
2. Park at the fair grounds and proceed to registration booth.
3. Register at the booth and get control stubs.
4. Stubs correspond to each bundle you bring. These stubs shall serve as your guide at the fair.
5. Proceed to the booth that matches with your stub.
6. Unload appropriate bundle for evaluation or weighing.
7. Receive payment from recycler based on standardized pricing chart.

They also accept donations of old tires (although more than 10 tires warrants prior advise), tarpaulin banners and streamers, old clothes and shoes, as well as defunct mobile phones, batteries and chargers (for disposal).

NUVALI is located in Sta. Rosa and Calamba, Laguna. Click here for directions. For more details about the development, click here.

For more details, contact the Glorietta Concierge at 752.7272, Ayala Foundation at 752-1084 or email swm@ayalafoundation.org.

Schedules and venues of the Recyclable Fair:
Every 1st Friday - Paseo De Magallanes (across Starbucks)
Every 2nd Friday - Goldcrest Parking Lot
Every 3rd Friday - ATC Parking Lot
Every 4th Friday - TriNoma North Carpark

To download or view January 2009 prices, click here.

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Now this does complicate the household or office segregation process a little bit, but in the end it's really just a matter of getting organized (plus maybe a few more garbage bins)!