April 7, 2008: Survival Flight

[narcuul]

This reminds me to recycle some beer cans. Why? Here's a longish explanation...

In finland we have a rather effective system for recycling practically every drink container you can buy, be it a soda can, a beer bottle or a rare liquor bottle. When you buy any of those, you pay a small "pawn" for the container. Around 0.1-0.2 euro per item depending on the container. When you return the bottle/can to a shop, you get a receipt from the machine you insert them to, and with that you get your money back. The system works well, since about 97-98% of every purchased packages are returned and recycled.

And.. As you (should) know, Finland is a rather small country considering it's population. Around 5 300 000 citizens atm. So every "large" city does not have enough funds to support the expensive rescue choppers by tax income. Kuopio, the town which I live in, has about 93 000 citizens. The rescue chopper service in this region (http://www.ilmarihems.fi/index.php) has been for a while doing rather badly financially, i guess, so the public has been given a choice to donate the money they get from recycling the bottles/cans to the rescue chopper company. so that's why. I buy beer to support a rescue chopper.

I don't know if there's any recycling system as effective as ours in use anywhere in US. Or any other country, for that matter. I really hope there is.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong. I remember reading from a "State of The World" -book (don't know which year that was) that so much aluminum in soda/beer cans is wasted globally each year, that all of the world's aeroplanes could be remade 1.5 times. Every year. That's a LOT of beer and soda cans....

[Elspode]

Originally Posted by narcuul

I buy beer to support a rescue chopper.

Nice...make the drunks pay for their own emergency transportation from the scene of the alcohol-involved crashes.

[Sundae]

Originally Posted by narcuul

I don't know if there's any recycling system as effective as ours in use anywhere in US. Or any other country, for that matter. I really hope there is.

Certainly not in this country, where all recycling is voluntary. But we're getting better. Our home (kerbside) collection in Greenwich takes just about everything and it is sorted for us.