Meet cleaner who takes his work home
ACLEANER at Rochdale Exchange is celebrating 20 years in the job with pop duo The Cheeky Girls - well, a photo of them anyway.
Tony di Rosa, 49, of is in charge of sorting Whitworth Road, has a and recycling the tonnes passion for collecting of waste material generated other people’s rubbish by the centre’s businesses, and rummaged through a market stalls and skip to salvage the photograph, shoppers and even spends taken when the his own free time rescuing girls visited the centre in things others throw away. 2003 for the official opening The former builder and of the HMV store. cotton mill worker said: The married father -ofone “I’m not much into modern things, I don’t have a mobile phone and I’m not computer literate but I really enjoy collecting stuff from the past.
“That photo is special to me as I remember the day very clearly. The girls arrived with their entourage, came into the basement where I was working, then went upstairs to cut the ribbon at HMV.”
Another of Tony’s treasured finds was a 1960s enamel ice cream sign thrown out by a shop near his home.
And there is a special place in his heart for a big pile of national newspapers and magazines from 1997 documenting the death of Princess Diana.
Tony said: “Somebody obviously didn’t want them anymore but to me they were like gold.
“Finding things like this is all part of the enjoyment of working at Rochdale Exchange and as I’ve been doing the job for so long now it shows I must be doing something right.” The centre has won a Green Apple environmental award for recycling, a fact of which Tony is very proud, spending almost all of his 7.30am to 5.30pm working day on the task.
He said: “I’d say that overall we recycle as much as 75 per cent of all the waste material at the centre and I’m very glad to be playing my part in helping to save the planet.”
He added: “I always ask permission from the centre before taking or keeping anything but most of the time, they are very happy for me to find a home for it.”