Further Bottle Top Recycling - for The Borders General Hospital

Another £700 has been raised for the Margaret Kerr Unit from the collection of 3.5 tonnes of plastic milk bottle tops for recycling (that’s about 5.25 million tops!) 

The presentation of the Cheque was made by Alan Gillie of CK Polymers, St Boswells (left in the photograph) to Andrew Brown of the Rotary Club of Galashiels and Sheena Cossar who co-ordinates the collection of the tops from all over the Scottish Borders, the Lothians, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Northumberland. Also in the photograph is Steven Gillie (Supervisor) CK Polymers, St Boswells. 

School children, Brownies and Cubs collect the tops as part of their recycling and ecology projects. Members of various clubs, churches, retirement and care homes, folk in banks, cafes and restaurants and hundreds of individuals all save their tops. Scottish Borders Council Recycling department and SBC Education department both help with this major recycling project. 

Volunteers meet twice a month to sort through the bags and remove anything that is not a plastic milk bottle top and transfer the tops to large bags which contain about 10kg. Between 25 and 40 of these large bags are then taken to CK Polymers, St Boswells where they will eventually become the outer casing for fibre optic cables. 

Now that the Margaret Kerr Unit is completed The Rotary Clubs will distribute future funds to small local charities in the Scottish Borders.