Slashdot Mirror
Couple Funds Honeymoon With Recyclables
John and Ann Till, from Petersfield, in Hampshire, spent three months collecting recyclables to pay for their honeymoon flights. The couple earned one reward point, which they converted into BA air miles, for every four items they recycled. In the end, they amassed 36,000 miles. Mr Till, 31, a railways communications manager, said, "We wanted to make our honeymoon special and were trying to think of ways to raise money for it. I saw on the machine that you got a Tesco Clubcard point for every four items you put in. For every 250 points you got 600 British Airways miles. We worked out that it would be possible to turn rubbish into our flights — as long as we had enough."
Note, they cheated: they cut cans in half so it counted as two cans. Invalidate half their value. They're stealing money from the system, basically. WTG.
We have scavengers like this that troll around the city using shopping carts and beat up pickup trucks. It's become a real problem, many have become really brazen and will take whatever they can get their hands on weather it's really trash or not They'll come up on your property and go through your trash bins looking for deposit items and other recyclables. I've confronted several of these people on a number of occasions, and even had steel rod stolen. I unloaded this in the driveway on the side of my house AWAY from the road and it was gone within an hour of unloading it.
About three years ago me and my wife had some bad times and we lived out of a park in first burbank, then santa monica. In CA, you could recycle 16 oz or smaller bottle for $0.04 or 20 oz and up for $0.08. In Burbank across the street they filmed the Ellen show and people would line up around the block for hours to get in to see her or even just sit in a room and watch her on cctv. When those lines went in there was trash everywhere. Two shows a day on filming days and between $20 and $50 in bottles per show, with a stack of discarded magazines to read as a nice bonus. It eventually got us a car to sleep in and the ability to get a part time job so we could make it back to Texas and start again.
My wife's gone, but I'm back on my feet and lead a relatively normal life. The shameful tidbit to close with is that I no longer recycle.