Garbage collector Jose Alberto Gutierrez of Colombia is not only cleaning the streets of his native city of Bogota, but is also promoting the habit of reading among his countrymen.
Gutierrez turned the family’s house into a library with the 25,000 books donated to him and collected from trash bins.
Twenty years ago, Gutierrez found a copy of Leo Tolstoy’s classic novel “Anna Karenina” while emptying trash bins and he kept it.
The was later joined by other classic titles like “The Little Prince”, “Sophie’s World”, the “Iliad”, and literature by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
“I realized that people were throwing books in the rubbish. I started to rescue them,” AFP quoted Gutierrez as saying.
The 54-year-old, his wife Luz Mery Gutierrez and their three children turned a whole floor of their house into library in 2000. They let anyone to read the books for free.
Most of his collections now come from donations.
Gutierrez also encourages volunteers to deliver free books to hundreds of poor and remote areas in the country.
“We have a blessed curse upon us. The more books we give away, the more come to us,” he said.
Photo Credits: AFP
