JEDDAH: An environment-conscious Saudi school has topped the world record for the longest chain of bottle caps.
Staff and children at the British International School of Jeddah (BISJ) threaded together 323,103 caps to break the previous Guinness World Records title of 260,866 gained in the Netherlands.
The official attempt followed a plastic pollution awareness campaign, in which the school managed to collect a massive amount of bottle caps with the aim of taking them to a recycling firm and donating the funds locally to support children with disabilities by buying items such as wheelchairs and leg braces.
Sonja Sutcliffe, deputy head of the BISJ, said: “We have tried to break the Guinness World Records title for over a year with an aim to raising community awareness of the problem of plastic pollution, especially in oceans.
“We started by collecting as many bottle caps as we could, even cleaning up the local areas a little on the way.
“The message was to visually represent how many plastic bottles we use and see how the tops could be converted into specialized equipment for less-fortunate children. This is an amazing achievement of teamwork, vision, and resilience,” she added.
The school approached the challenge in a methodical and scientific way, working out the best ways to put holes in the caps and measure out fishing line to string them together.
Organizers used standard-size bottle caps, fishing line to make the lines of caps and large needles to thread the caps onto the line, as well as specific recording sheets for counting and measuring.
The final length of the chain was measured at 2,738.5 meters.
