The Cape West Girl Guides shattered a Guinness World Record by stringing bottle tops together. The best part, they recycled all the tops to pay for a special surgery.
Girl guides and girl scouts from across the Western Cape have made it into the Guinness Book of World Records. They created the world’s longest string of plastic bottle tops, measuring at 1.37kms and using nearly 2500 tonnes of plastic. In the end, that worked out to be 121,600 bottle tops. The original world record stood at 117 040 bottle tops. That is plastic that won’t end up in a landfill or the ocean!
The girls took on the challenge to not only achieved the world record but also to recycle the plastic tops and collect the money for Operation Smile.
Over 300 girl guides attended the event on the day but they spent months collecting plastic bottle tops to achieve the record on the day. According to the ranger leader for Bothasig, Tanya Prinsloo, schools and libraries got involved too and collected thousands of bottle tops. The final figures for the money raised from the recycling have not yet been released as more bottle tops have been donated.
“We collect bottle caps for recycling to raise funds for charity and wanted a way to take it further. We found the record of stringing bottle caps together, and got support from our chapters from Cape Point to Heidelberg and outside the province, and shopping centres and libraries, who all donated bottle caps,” – Tanya Prinsloo
Through the collection of additional donations, the girl guides have been able to raise enough money to fund two operations with the Operation Smile. This is a massive achievement and it is all thanks to their valiant effort and breaking the world record.
You can see their efforts below.
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