How to handle caps in Istanbul?
I had visitors this week: my Dutch friend Janet and her 11 year old daughter Eefke. When we walked down the road from my house to down-town Üsküdar for the first time, we saw a big plastic bottle hanging on a fence. I had some blue bottle caps in my bag, and I put them in the bottle. The rest of the week, we’ve been obsessed with caps.
Eefke (11) handling caps in Istanbul
The caps are collected by a recycling company. They turn them into plastic pallets that last for decades. Environmentally great, of course. But the ultimate great goal is that for every 150 kilograms of caps, somebody gets a wheelchair for free! I think it works like this, (but I didn’t check the details): people who need a wheelchair but have no money to buy one, can apply at the recycling company, and also people can collect these caps themselves and exchange them for a wheelchair if they manage to collect 150 kilos. (The comment section underneath is open to correct me if I’m wrong.)
Eefke just loved the idea. And we drank a lot of bottles of water, since it’s ridiculously hot and humid in Istanbul. We collected the caps and when we saw an empty bottle somewhere, Eefke ran to it and threw the caps in.
So, if you happen to be in Istanbul, now you know what to do with your bottle caps. Don’t throw them away screwed to your empty water bottle, but keep them and throw them into the empty receptacle bottles. So that when you’re running around in the city seeing as much of it as possible (the three of us didn’t do that, actually, we kept it nice and slow), you can make somebody else more mobile too!
Here are previous ‘How to’ posts about Istanbul:
* How to dress in Istanbul
* How to manage your money in Istanbul
wow- 150 kilos!
I am trying to stay optimistic about the cap situation, and i do see so many people participating, all with the idea that caps=wheelchairs. but have yet to find one example of a wheelchair recipient, or even to catch a recycling company collector in action.
what i DO know is that the caps are the single most profitable thing the copculer (garbage pick-through guys) can collect. They rummage and collect all sorts of recyclables, and redeem them at various central spots… but these caps are the items that they get the most for, by weight/volume, and by a huge margin. Keep in mind, these guys are barely getting by to begin with- so losing out on all these caps? makes the difference between getting by and, well, not. For them and those that depend on them.
all for a public awareness campaign with the capacity to improve conditions for those in need, but I would rather this not come at the expense of an already deeply marginalized population.
(i separate out all the recyclable odds and ends and leave that bag out around copcu-o’clock, not when it is the belediye- who do target the ‘freelancers’ for some inane reason, confiscating their sacks and such- collection time)
It is a good idea if it works…
http://www.baskahaber.org/2012/08/omurilik-felclileri-dernegi-mavi.html