Sixty-Two Kilos from a Donation Drive: What to Keep Before the Monsoon
A school collects 62 kg of waste for its Divyang students' craft unit. The load is: 14 kg PET bottles, still holding liquid and labels; 6 kg HDPE oil cans with residue; 9 kg coconut shells, some with black mould; 5 kg used tyre tubes; 3 kg e-waste (a charger, two adaptors, mixed wires); 2 kg broken glass bangles; 4 kg food-soiled paper; 7 kg plastic toys with no labels or recycling code; 6 kg cotton rags; and 6 kg of unopened packets of unknown material. The store is an open verandah with a tin roof, and the materials must wait two weeks before use; local humidity is around 80 per cent and it rains most afternoons. Eight students will sort, one of whom has a hearing impairment and works best with written and picture instructions. During unloading a student cut a finger on the bangle glass. The craft unit has a bench, a bucket tap and a covered bin, nothing else.
1. Make the sorting plan: what you keep, what you divert, and the reason for each decision.
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Keep, with conditions
- PET bottles (14 kg): keep. Rigid, cuttable, available in quantity. Must be emptied, de-labelled and washed the same day, because sugar residue in a warm verandah breeds mould and attracts insects.
- Tyre tubes (5 kg): keep. Excellent for hinges, handles and non-slip feet; store flat and away from sunlight, since rubber perishes.
- Coconut shells (9 kg): keep only the sound, dry ones. Scrape off mould outdoors with a mask on, then dry in sun; a mouldy shell is a respiratory and skin risk in a closed room.
- Cotton rags (6 kg): keep if dry. They become polishing cloth and packing cushioning; damp rags must be dried or discarded.
- HDPE oil cans (6 kg): keep only after hot-water and detergent degreasing, outdoors, with gloves; oil film stops paint and adhesive sticking and is a fire risk near the glue gun.
Divert or reject
- E-waste (3 kg): do not cut or burn. Send to an authorised e-waste recycler; wires contain metals and PVC insulation.
- Bangle glass (2 kg): reject from a student craft line. Sharp, unpredictable fracture; the injury already happened.
- Food-soiled paper (4 kg): compost or reject; it will rot in two weeks of monsoon.
- Unlabelled toys (7 kg) and unknown packets (6 kg): quarantine. Unknown plastic may be PVC, which releases hydrogen chloride when heated; never heat-test it.
Reasoning pattern: keep what is rigid, cleanable, plentiful and safe to cut cold; divert what is sharp, contaminated, unknown or a fume risk.
2. Seven kilograms of plastic toys have no recycling code and no label. How will you identify or handle them without burning samples?
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Handling rule first: no flame test, no hot-wire smell test in a student workshop. Burning mixed plastics can release hydrogen chloride, styrene or cyanide-type fumes, and the trainee learns nothing worth the risk.
Identify by the least dangerous evidence, in this order
- Markings: look for the triangle number on the base, inside the moulding, on a sticker or in the embossed text. Photograph any mark for the record sheet.
- Magnet: separates steel screws and inserts from plastic; useful because a toy is rarely one material.
- Water float test: HDPE and PP usually float; PET, PS and PVC usually sink. A small offcut in a bucket is safe and quick, and it tells you the family, not the exact resin.
- Flex and sound: PP hinges without whitening; PS cracks with a sharp snap and crazes; PVC feels rubbery or leathery and is often used for soft toy parts and imitation leather.
- History: toys with flexible soft parts, printed transfers or a glossy leathery feel are the ones most likely to be PVC or contain plasticiser; exclude them.
Decision: use only identified rigid PP or HDPE toy parts for cutting and gluing, and only after washing. Quarantine the rest and hand them to the municipal dry-waste channel. Write the result on a sorting card with pictures for the hearing-impaired student, so the rule is followed when the trainer is not present.
3. State the storage and handling rules for the two-week monsoon wait, and the safety measures after the bangle-glass cut.
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Storage rules
- Raise everything off the floor on pallets or bricks: 150 mm minimum, because a verandah floor wets in driving rain.
- Sort before storage, not after. Once bags are stacked, mould spreads and labels are lost; segregate into labelled bins on day one.
- Keep materials dry and vented: mesh crates or open-mouth sacks, not sealed bags, so condensation escapes. Cover with a sheet that lets air through, and never store the e-waste or oil cans near the glue gun area.
- Sunlight control: PET and rubber degrade under two weeks of direct sun; keep both under the roof edge.
- First-in, first-out: date each bin and use the oldest first; the coconut shells must be first because they are the mould risk.
- Daily five-minute check: any wet bag, any smell, any insect activity is removed that day.
After the cut
- First aid: wash with running water, dry, dress, and record in an accident register; check tetanus status with the school nurse.
- Immediate control: bangle glass is removed from the verandah in a rigid lidded container labelled 'sharp', not a plastic bag that someone will press.
- Administrative: gloves for all unloading, one person opens bags with a hook rather than hands, and a written picture-based unloading sequence for the hearing-impaired student.
- Review: the cut happened while unloading, so the fault is the receiving step, not the sorting step. Ask donors to pack sharps separately; that is the elimination control that prevents a repeat.