Christmas “cava” recycling campaign

PALMA
WITH the festive season upon us, the Balearic small to medium-sized business association (Pimeb) is, for the ninth consecutive year, promoting an empty “cava” bottle recycling campaign with proceeds going to a Majorcan charity organisation. “The Glass Kings” as the project is known, making reference to the Feast of the Kings celebrated in Spain on 6th January, is supported by schools, parish churches and companies around the Island. These groups want to show support for the environment and charity by providing a sound backing for organising the collection of empty bottles and transporting them to recycling plants. President of the Pimeb foundation, Tomas Garrido, explained yesterday that for every five bottles of empty cava brought by hotels to the Deixalles recycling centres around the Island, the charity “Caritas” will receive a donation of one euro. This year, the campaign is planning to collect and recycle as many as 165'000 bottles although last year's operation resulted in 172'532 “cava” empties being collected, many more than the 160'000 target.

Garrido highlighted the double benefit of the campaign. On one hand, the environment is benefiting from being free of bottles lying around the streets after seasonal festivities, and the second is that the underprivileged are gaining financially. Dexailles, the recycling charity, also take on extra personnel to support the “cava” campaign which runs to 5th January, giving a chance to people living on the edges of society to immerse themselves in a worthwhile project. Meanwhile the regional Environment ministry has launched its own campaign to raise public awareness about the need to reduce the amount of rubbish which is produced during the festive season. Under the slogan of “give new life to the things you throw away,” the ministry points to the need to selectively recycle glass, paper and cardboard, and plastic containers - keeping them separate from organic waste, and asks people not to use real trees for decoration.