A foreigner living in Shanghai has become a changed man after serving as a garbage-sorting volunteer.

At the beginning of July, Shanghai introduced strict new rubbish-sorting rules requiring residents to divide up their trash into four distinct categories (residual garbage, household garbage, recyclables, and hazardous waste).

In the first week, nearly 200 fines were handed out along with thousands more warnings, however, the city has also meted out some more unusual punishments.

For failing to properly sort his trash, one expat resident of Putuo district, described in a Shine.cn report as only an African man, recently worked for half a day as a local garbage-sorting volunteer.

Reportedly, the man claimed that he didn’t know about all the new laws because he didn’t understand all the Chinese PSAs. Now, however, he is a firm believer.

According to the report, he “realized his mistake and the necessity of trash sorting after being educated by team officials” which helped him “understood the hard work of cleaners” and declare that he would “sort waste correctly and promote garbage sorting among other expats.”

[Images via Shine.cn]