REDUCE, reuse, recycle, it's a message we hear every day, but as the ABC's War on Waste has noted there are some products that are more recyclable than others.
For many of us condoms would have been in the non-recyclable items, but it seems one mans trash is another man's treasure in Vietnam, where an enterprising and somewhat questionable business has been caught giving the contraceptive sheaths a second life.
Broadcaster Vietnam TV has revealed that police swooped on a warehouse this week where the illicit recycling operation was taking place, netting an estimated haul of 345,000 previously tried condoms, weighing in at 360kg.
A woman detained during the raid outlined the process used to return the contraceptives to their former glory, by initially boiling and drying them, before reshaping the condoms using a wooden phallus, after which they were repacked and resold.
The woman said she received the equivalent of 24 cents of every kilo of the products she recycled making, giving her a total of $86.40 for her efforts - assuming she had a hand in cleaning all 345,000 of the laundered condoms.
Vietnam TV was unable to confirm how many of the recycled latex sheaths had been returned to the market, or where the environmentally-minded individually behind the scheme had sold them.
The above article was sent to subscribers in Pharmacy Daily's issue from 25 Sep 20
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