At the Bottom of the Recycling Trade: Karung Gunis and Cardboard Collectors

“Pieter van der Heyden after Pieter Bruegel the Elder: Big Fish Eat Little Fish” (17.3.859) In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/17.3.859. (October 2006) 

 

After 4pm and over the next two hours before the karung guni man called it a day, elderly cardboard collectors began trickling in from the two roads that lead to the collection point. Bathed in the golden rays of the evening sun, the old folks pushed their cartful of flattened cardboard slowly forward with a doggedness that belied their frail and scrawny appearance.

There were both men and women plying their trade. Their shriveled skin, withered arms and grey hair are telling signs of their advanced age.