Bottle cap drive sets world record in Argentina, helps build hospital

Citizens across five Argentine and three Colombian cities joined together to collect plastic bottle caps from soda and juice bottles, setting a new Guiness World Record on Saturday (November 29) for the most collected.

Families arrived to the drive site in Buenos Aires on Saturday to submit their final bottle cap stashes for counting.

The drive was organized by the Garrahan and Sanar Foundations in an effort to support construction of a new Oncology center at Hospital Garrahan in Buenos Aires.

Citizens collected 198 million bottle caps, weighing 476 tons, which will earn nearly $200,000 (1,700,000 Argentine pesos) to offset construction costs of the new oncology patients ward, which is already underway.

Garrahan Foundation director Silvia Kassab said she is looking forward to the next steps for the hospital.

"We are continuing to move forward with this whole new space, which will provide opportunity and convenience to the entire sector of oncology. Also with the cash we will earn from turning in these tons of bottle caps, it will also go toward the construction," Kassab said.

Guinness World Record supervised the counting process in both Colombia and Argentina. — Reuters