A bottle or two might be a regular sight at a rugby match, but
nearly six
thousand helped score a world first for environmentally friendly
water
supplier, Greenworks Solutions.
The company has received official approval from Guinness World
Records™ for breaking the record for longest chain of
plastic bottles. The final length incorporated a whopping
record total of 5,832 bottles, beating the previous record of
5,713, held by an American, from Michigan.
On April 16th 2011, at Moseley Rugby Club Birmingham, 55 workers
from Greenworks Solutions, which specialises in eco-friendly
mains-fed water coolers, created a chain of standard plastic
bottles.
Georgina Sutherland, the organiser of the record-breaking
attempt said: "We wanted to break the world record so people
would stop and take note of the problem plastic bottles pose
to the environment, whilst promoting the work of our charitable
arm, particularly its projects in the town of Kwahu-Tafo, in
Ghana."
The idea behind the record attempt was to highlight the
environmental problems associated with plastic bottle waste
and to create a visual image to hammer the message home.
Processing, packaging, transportation and sale of bottled water
as well as the disposal of the waste, involves a significant
amount of energy use and pollution.
Speaking on behalf of Greenworks Solutions, Adam Warren, MD
explained: "The energy used to produce a single plastic bottle
could be used to power a 60 watt light-bulb for six hours.
"We know that over thirteen billion plastic bottles are dumped
in landfill in the UK every year, which works out as over 200
for every person in the UK. To put this into perspective, the
pile of water bottles in our record-breaker is equivalent to the
amount used by the average family in less than ten years", he
concluded.
Veolia Environmental Services, one of the UK's leading recycling
firms, has offered to collect and recycle the 5,832 plastic
bottles.