Japanese NPO Registered in Guinness Records for Plastic Bottle Top Collection

Takamatsu Yonjyunananenkai, a non-profit organization in Takamatsu City, Kagawa Prefecture, was officially registered in the Guinness World Records in September 2012 under the achievement "most plastic bottle caps recycled in one year." The organization held a ceremony on October 21 at Sanuki Kodomo-no-kuni, a children's recreational facility in the city, and presented certificates of appreciation to the people who helped collect the bottle caps.

Takamatsu Yonjyunananenkai was established in April 2001 by members who were born in 1972 (Year 47 in the Showa era; "yonjyunananen" is Japanese for "47"). The group's mission is to do things for their hometown that they can all be proud of, while also building personal skills and caring relationships with each other.

As the culmination of their learning, they launched a bottle cap collection project, "Takamatsu Smile Project," in 2010. The group planned to cash in the collected bottle caps to send vaccines to children around the world while also attempting to set a Guinness World Records to increase the name recognition of Takamatsu.

They collected a total of 5,049,472 caps, enough to provide 16,800 vaccines. At the ceremony, 2,719,997 of the bottle caps that were collected during the year ending August 2012 were packed in bags and piled up in the shape of a pyramid with a certificate placed at the center.

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