NCERT Solutions for Class 5th The World Around Us Chapter 4 Things we give to recyclers — Write and Find out

A school produces a lot of the very things recyclers want — mostly paper.

Sample answer: “Our school gives old newspapers from the library, used answer sheets after the exams are over, and the cardboard cartons that the new books came in. Last year the office also gave away two broken chairs and some iron rods to the kabadiwala. The money from the raddi went into the school garden fund.”

Almost every Indian home keeps a corner or a sack for this — usually behind a door, on top of a cupboard or in the store room. Go and look at yours, then ask.

Sample answer: “I asked my mother. She keeps a big bundle of newspapers behind the almirah and sells it to the raddiwala every two or three months. She also keeps empty jam bottles, which she washes and fills with rajma and chana. My father has kept an old broken table fan and some wires on the terrace for the kabadiwala. My grandmother keeps our old cotton clothes to cut into floor cloths, and gives the rest to the bartanwala for steel vessels.”

How to arrange the visit

1. With your teacher, speak to the kabadiwala who comes to your school or your street. Invite him or her for a fixed day and time, and say it will take about half an hour.
2. As a class, write your questions on the board before the visit and choose who will ask which one, so that nobody talks over anyone.
3. On the day, greet the guest, offer a chair and a glass of water, and listen without interrupting. Ask permission before taking a photograph.
4. Take notes. Thank the guest at the end, and put up what you learnt on the class notice board.

Good questions to ask

• What do you collect, and which item is the most useful to you?
• Where do the newspapers go after they leave your cart?
• What do you wish people would do before they hand things over to you?
• What is the hardest part of your work?
• Have you ever been hurt by something in the waste?

Sample answer — what our class learnt from Salim bhai's visit: “He has been collecting raddi for eighteen years. He collects newspapers, books, cardboard, iron, plastic bottles and old vessels. He sorts everything at his shop into separate piles — white paper fetches more than newspaper, and metal fetches the most. From his shop it goes to a bigger dealer, and from there to a factory. He told us that paper is soaked in water and made into pulp, and new paper is made from that pulp; and that plastic bottles are cut into flakes, melted, and turned into thread for cloth.

The thing that stayed with us most was his answer to our last question. He said: ‘Please tie the paper in a bundle and keep the glass separate. When people mix broken glass into a bag of wet kitchen waste, my hand gets cut. It has happened four times.’ After that our class made a poster for the school gate: Separate first. Someone's hands are on the other side.”