Beijing - Sanitation officers in Guangzhou had to haul off 20 tons of garbage collected by an elderly woman after neighbours got fed up with the stench wafting from her home, the Guangzhou Daily said on Sunday.
Waste collectors dispatched to the apartment in the southern city on Saturday found that the woman - who was over 70 years old and lived alone - had buried even her bed in heaps of old clothes, bottles and scrap wood over a two-year period.
Beneath the uncovered piles, cockroaches swarmed, the paper said.
Residents described the woman's daily rubbish hunt as an addiction and said very few of the articles she had kept were recyclable.
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But the woman tried desperately to stop the garbage men, clutching a tattered garment in protest. "The clothing's still clean, it's still wearable," the paper quoted her as saying.
Recycling has become a craze among some Chinese senior citizens, who remember the hard days of Mao's Great Leap Forward (1958-1960), when people melted down their tools and utensils in a reckless campaign for iron and steel.
Some have taken to foraging for discarded items as a means to scrape by a meagre living or to supplement inadequate pensions.
During the day-long sweep in Guangzhou, workers filled more than a 100 small carts and three garbage lorries.
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