Woman collects one million bottle tops for charity

A woman who started collecting plastic bottle tops for her son’s school project was inundated with donations – and now has over a MILLION.

Jeanette Kemlo, 47, started hoarding the colourful tops three years ago and asked friends, family and local parents to help out.

But the collection ”ran out of control” when people began dumping bags full of the plastic tops on her driveway.

Jeanette says the collection swelled even further when local businesses started donating and she now claims to have up to a million at her home in Barnstaple, Devon.

She said: ”The council doesn’t collect bottle tops in their weekly recycling but they can be recycled.

”We asked the children to bring in any plastic milk bottle tops so that we could sell them to a private firm to be recycled and donate the money to charity.

”Word soon spread about the project and bottle tops were coming in from all over the place – churches, hospitals, schools, even people from as far afield as Bristol and Cornwall.

”I think some people also saw the collection in my driveway and starting adding to it, dropping off caps here and there whenever they passed. I reckon there must be a million by now.”

Jeannette began collecting the tops for a project for son Adam.

She said: ”I’m thinking about running a competition where people can guess how many we have collected to raise more money. The only downside is that it’ll be me who has to count them all.”