Lotta bottle

[luckykaa]

I saw a box at work.  Someone's collecting milk bottle tops for charity.  Apparently the money goes to buying a kid a wheelchair.

I've heard about these things before and it makes no sense.

Google tells me that type of plastic goes for £50 a tonne.  A tonne of plastic bottle tops is several hundred thousand of the things.  A motorised wheelchair costs £1000 or so.  So that's 20 tonnes.  Seems like it would be hard for any single charity to collect so many.  Most sites on this scheme also suggest this is probably a hoax. 

But I've been hearing about this for years.  Who are these people who are collecting them?  Are people really organising a collection without thinking of what the next stage is?  Do they all end up going to the same person?  What does that person do with them?  Or is there some charity actually collecting them?

I'm just confused. 

Comments

[rattieally.livejournal.com]

I'm confused to, someone at my work is collecting them for a playground. Maybe they build the playground out of bottle tops?

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

It's true, there are recycling companies taking bin bags full of milk bottle tops and paying for them.

However it's not a lot of money.

http://www.ghsrecyclingltd.co.uk/10444/info.php?p=7&pno=0

It didn't take long to find on google I'm afraid :-)