ShredRite Facebook ad: “Read This Before You Throw Out Another Old Yasin Booklet”

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I sold a stack of old Yasin booklets to the karang guni uncle for fifty cents. He weighed them with the newspapers. I did not think twice. That was me a year ago. I want to tell you what happened, because I think a lot of us are exactly where I was. I am not a careless person. I pray. I send my children for mengaji. I keep a tidy home in our four-room flat in Yishun. It was just a small habit. After Ramadan, the old timetable comes off the fridge. The doa printed at the bottom had done its job. Into the blue bin it went, with the cardboard and the newspapers. The children's old Iqra books, the ones with the covers falling off, I let them go out with the karang guni. The pamphlets my husband brought back from Friday prayers, the ones that pile up on the shoe cabinet, I cleared those whenever the stack got too tall. I never thought about it. Not once. Then one afternoon my mother came to visit. She was helping me sort the recycling pile by the door. She picked up one of the old Yasin booklets from a tahlil we had been to months before. She held it for a moment. Then she went very quiet. "Sayang," she said. "You know this has the name of Allah inside, right?" I said yes, of course. "Then we cannot put it with the newspaper." I did not understand at first. I told her it was old. It was falling apart. We were not using it anymore. She looked at me. Not angry. Just a little sad. "It is not about whether we are still using it. It is about whose words are printed inside." After she left, I could not stop thinking about it. I started looking around my own home with different eyes. The cracked Ayat Kursi frame in the storeroom, from when we renovated. My late father's Quran, soft cover, the binding long gone, sitting at the bottom of a drawer because nobody had the heart to move it. A whole stack of kenduri Yasin booklets in the kitchen cabinet. The children's worn mushaf from when they first learned to read. Wedding cards, all of them starting with Bismillah. Every one of those carried the name of Allah, or a verse, or a doa. And for years I had been slipping things just like them into the recycling, or handing them to the karang guni, for fifty cents. I am not telling you this to make myself sound terrible. I am telling you because I genuinely did not know. Nobody had taught me. We learn how to pray, how to fast, how to give zakat. But somewhere between our grandparents' kampung days and our life in these flats, nobody sat us down and explained what to do with a Quran once it has fallen apart, or a booklet once the tahlil is over. So we keep them in a drawer. Or, without realising, we throw them out with everything else. Once I understood, I wanted to fix it. But I did not know how. I searched online late at night. "How to dispose old Quran Singapore." The answers confused me more. Some said bury it. Bury it where? Under the void deck? In the park? That cannot be right. Some said burn it. Burn it where, in my kitchen? On the common corridor? I could already picture my neighbours calling SCDF. The old ways assumed you had land. A garden. Space and privacy. None of that exists fifteen storeys up. I asked at the mosque. They only collect a few times a year, and the next round was not scheduled. So the box just sat there. Now that I knew, the not-knowing-what-to-do felt heavier than not-knowing-it-was-a-problem ever had. It was Kak Nora, two doors down, who told me. We were at the common corridor and I mentioned it, half embarrassed, the way you bring up something you feel you should already know. She did not laugh. She just said, "Oh, you can get someone to come and collect. Muslim-owned. They shred everything the Shariah-compliant way. I used them last year." I had no idea such a thing existed. She explained it, and it finally made sense. The service is called ShredRite. They come to your doorstep, weigh everything in front of you, and take it back to be micro-shredded until every piece is smaller than a grain of rice. Not strips you can still read. Fragments, so fine that no letter of Allah's name can ever sit beside another again. That is the whole point, she said. The reason our elders buried or burned was never about the soil or the fire. It was to make sure the sacred words were never trampled, never mixed with filth, never left somewhere unworthy. Micro-shredding until nothing is readable does the very same thing. It just fits the way we live now. I booked through their website. A man named Hambali replied on WhatsApp that same evening. He told me plainly what they take, how it works, and the price before I even asked. Five dollars fifty a kilo for books and papers, seven a kilo for frames and harder items, and a twenty dollar booking fee. No surprises. He came with his younger brother. Both in white baju kurung and songkok. They greeted us with salam at the door. They brought a small scale and weighed everything right there at my doorstep. Hambali picked up my father's old Quran with both hands and set it down gently. 13.4 kilos in total. I paid by PayNow. The receipt came through on WhatsApp before they reached the lift. They told us everything would go back to their facility and be micro-shredded according to Shariah guidelines, down to those rice-grain pieces. When they left, I stood in my doorway for a while. It was not a dramatic feeling. Just quiet. The kind of quiet you feel when you have finally done right by something you did not even know you had been doing wrong. Now when I clear the house, I look at that blue bin differently. I know what can go in, and what deserves to be handled with care. I think about how many of us are exactly where I was a year ago. Not careless. Just never taught. Quietly putting the name of Allah out with the newspapers, with no idea there is another way. If that has ever been you, please do not feel bad. I was there too. I have left their details in the comments. There is no rush and no pressure. But the next time you are about to drop an old kitab or a Yasin booklet into the bin, pause for a moment. Save this post. When you are ready, you will know what to do.

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Read This Before You Throw Out Another Old Yasin Booklet ☝🏻

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