“Together we collect caps of love” is an initiative set up by a group of young people in the different regions and governorates of Tunisia.
The goal of this initiative is to collect plastic bottle caps and turn them into funds for the needy. In addition, you can turn your caps into treasure or recycle them so they avoid filling the landfill and harm our eco-system.
It also aims to recover and recycle caps from plastic bottles in order to provide them with a new application by specifically buying them to recycling centres.
Besides, the income of these caps is used to provide people with special needs with wheelchairs. It is also a precious means to provide needy pupils with school supplies by the new school year.
To take advantage of and preserve this valuable resource, the groups of young people nationwide have taken measures to implement recycling initiatives, in order to raise awareness of the importance of this material among local populations.
Amine Farhat Civil and Environmental Activist and member of the group “Together we collect caps of love” told TunisianMonitorOnline that the idea started last June 28 at the initiative of Wafa Werghmi who considered that we suffered from a big problem of plastic waste in Tunisia. She initiated the idea of collecting caps of plastic bottles to be sold afterwards so as to help needy people or people with special needs.
The idea was supported by people when a facebook page was created and reached nearly 50,000 members nationwide, from all the 24 governorates of the country.
These members are willing to work on collecting plastic bottle caps whose life duration is about 400 years.
The caps are a source of pollution and can be found everywhere in our lands which is very harmful to our eco-system.
“Our groups of collectors have no technical means to recycle these bottle caps, so they collect and store in a storage centre,” Amine Farhat said.
“We leave the plastic bottles for other people who are working on collecting them to earn their living”, he added
He said:” We collect the caps in all the governorates and every end of the month we take them to the Mourouj centre which belongs to Walid El Heni, member of the group “Together we collect caps of love” in which we store all the bottle caps collected.”
Amine Farhat indicated that a recycling company in Tunis came to buy these caps and with the money we earned we bought 3 wheelchairs last July.
He said that the group collected nearly 1,200 kilos of caps i.e. 700,000 caps paying tribute to the members of the facebook page who supported the initiative and donated 22 wheelchairs which were distributed to people with special needs with the help of the coordinators of all governorates to set the number of priority people who need these wheelchairs.
“The second challenge”, Amine Farhat said, “we went on collecting plastic bottle caps last August as the new school year was approaching. We helped some pupils who are needy and cannot afford the school supplies.”
A school in Nadour and another in Weslatia were provided with school supplies which were handed to needy pupils. By this act we extended happiness and enthusiasm among the pupils to join classes with dignity”, Amine Farhat said proudly.
The “Together we collect caps of love” group became very big and very active in all the governorates, he said indicating that as part of the International Carthage Festival, “we collected all bottle caps left by the spectators in the theatre”. “The act was appreciated by people there. In fact, it was a way of raising awareness among people on the importance of collecting caps for environmental and charity purposes”, Amine Farhat emphasized.
The second challenge was in August when we collected 2,400 kg of plastic bottle caps which equal to 1million and 400 caps in a bid to stop the number of caps thrown and left in nature harming and threatening the eco-system dramatically, Amine Farhat Civil and Environmental Activist and members of the group “Together we collect caps of love” concluded.
TunisianMonitorOnline (NejiMed)
