Monday 18th April 2011 - Published by Kelly Jackson - Communications Executive
Greenworks Bottles the Secret to Record Breaking Success
A bottle or two might be a regular sight at a rugby match, but nearly six thousand helped score a world first for environmentally friendly water supplier, Greenworks Solutions.
The company broke the Guinness World Record for the longest chain of plastic bottles before Moseley Rugby Club’s victory against Plymouth Albion in the RFU Championship on Saturday (16th).
Before the match, at Moseley Rugby Club, in Birmingham, 55 workers from Greenworks Solutions, which specialises in eco-friendly mains-fed water coolers, created a chain of standard plastic bottles. The final length incorporated a whopping record total of 5,832 bottles, beating the previous record of 5,713, held by an American, from Michigan.
The Greencare Foundation, the charity arm of Kent-based Greenworks Solutions, is the official sponsor of the Moseley Rugby Club shirt.
Georgina Sutherland, the organiser of the record-breaking attempt said: “We wanted to break the world record so people would stop and take note of the problem plastic bottles pose to the environment, whilst promoting the work of our charitable arm, particularly its projects in the town of Kwahu-Tafo, in Ghana.”
The idea behind the record attempt was to highlight the environmental problems associated with plastic bottle waste and to create a visual image to hammer the message home.
Processing, packaging, transportation and sale of bottled water as well as the disposal of the waste, involves a significant amount of energy use and pollution.
Speaking on behalf of Greenworks Solutions, Adam Warren, MD explained: “The energy used to produce a single plastic bottle could be used to power a 60 watt light-bulb for six hours.
“We know that over thirteen billion plastic bottles are dumped in landfill in the UK every year, which works out as over 200 for every person in the UK. To put this into perspective, the pile of water bottles in our record-breaker is equivalent to the amount used by the average family in less than ten years”, he concluded.
Veolia Environmental Services, one of the UK's leading recycling firms, has offered to collect and recycle the 5,832 plastic bottles.
