How Tons of Trash Might Help Find a Cure for Cancer Guinness World Records
go to original October 14, 2013

During 2013, the Colombian population have gone bottle cap-collecting crazy.

They aimed to help the Fundación Sanar (a charity dedicated to children with cancer) break the record for the most bottle caps recycled in 8 hours, with proceeds raised from the sale of the caps helping 500 children diagnosed with cancer.

The big weigh-in took place on the outskirts of the South American country's capital, Bogotá. According to the Guinness World Records rules, the bottle caps can be collected beforehand but there is an 8-hour time limit to bring everything to one place for weighing and eventual recycling. Sanar called on the help of the state postal service, 4-72, who transported the plastic from every corner of Colombia to the event site. Once there, the National Police took charge with 300 cadets helping with the moving and loading of huge bags of bottle caps.

... It took just 4 of the stipulated 8 hours to pass the previous record of 91,017.8 kg (200,659.901 lb) set in Argentina in 2011 by another children’s charity, Fundación Garrahan. The target for Sanar was 100 tonnes (100,000 kg/220,462.262 lb), but they soon realized that the level of support from Colombia´s population of 45 million was much greater than even their wildest dreams... The final total was announced as a whopping 156,460 kg (344,935 lb), which represents approximately more than 70 million bottle caps.

Read the rest at Guinness World Records

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