Bring your recyclables to the SM Trash to Cash market and exchange them for cash.

I always appreciate earth-friendly initiatives such as recycling, so these words immediately caught my eye despite its signage hidden behind a large plant while I was at the SM mall last month. It’s an announcement for the Trash to Cash Recycling Market happening every first Friday and Saturday of the month, from 8:00AM to 2:00PM at the mall open parking area.

I’ve been wishing for a recycling market here in our city where we could have a place to discard whatever junk we have here at home. Kudos to SM Bacolod for coming up with an environment-friendly project to “reduce, reuse and recycle” in cooperation with Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) and Philippine Business for the Environment (PBE). Waste materials such as scrap paper, cardboard, plastic bottles, plastic scraps, aluminum, tin cans and other junk are welcome.

Thus, we dropped by at the SM north parking area for this month’s first Saturday Trash to Cash waste market activity which was just under the West Bridgeway. We brought some computer-related stuff such as used printer cartridges, obsolete RAM cards, flat cables and all sorts of electronic junk.

We still have a lot of old stuff to be discarded, so I will be sorting them out for next month’s recycling market. I have to check out our old kitchen as there might be some damaged appliances lurking around that are just gathering dust. It does take time to sort out old stuff and decide which ones to discard or give away. Fortunately, we were able to recover our old La Germania appliance with an oven repair and it’s now being used by my uncle.

How much does one get from SM’s Trash to Cash program? You will be paid Php14.00 per kilo of plastic bottles and Php6.00 per kilo of electronic junk and other waste materials such as big boxes and cardboards. I think the rate per kilo for scrap paper is lower. I saw some sacks of used cans, but was not able to inquire about their rate per kilogram.

While it’s true that in a recycling market, you get paid in cash in exchange for the trash you give, the amount is not really much of a concern. By doing waste segregation and being responsible in disposing household trash especially electronic waste, it’s truly a worthwhile effort knowing that you’ve done your part in helping Mother Earth.