A nonprofit organization raised ¥3.1 million in October by collecting plastic bottle caps and selling them to recycling companies, raising money for 155,000 children to receive polio vaccines.
The money collected by Yokohama-based NPO Ecocap Movement has been donated to Japan Committee Vaccines for the World's Children, which sends vaccines to Myanmar and Laos. Every 800 caps pay for one vaccination, which costs ¥20.
Since it started in 2007, the NPO has collected 188 million caps that have paid for vaccinations for 235,000 children.
Students running a school festival at Nagoya Gakuin University collected 610,000 caps in six months, far exceeding their goal of 80,000.
"It would be hard to engage in the activity by only calling for protection of the environment, so it was good to have an incentive of sending vaccines," said Yuki Takeuchi, 20, a third-year economics student.
"The appeal of the movement is that anyone can participate in an activity that saves lives. Next, we want to lay the groundwork for collecting caps in each prefecture," said 67-year-old Chikashi Nagata, secretary general of the NPO.
