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World Landmine News
Ring-pull recycling aids landmine victims - Euroa Gazette (Australia)
After you read this, you might well be thinking of Jim Burnside and land mines when next you open an aluminium can, thanks to the process known as ‘article association’.
To help you remember something, you can condition yourself to think of it at an unrelated moment - for example, opening your car door to go home might remind you that you need to buy milk. With ring-pulls, it will be Jim and the mines.
The reason for this is that Jim is a ring-pull collector. Not in the sense that he mounts them in display cabinets, but that he collects them to raise money for the provision of prostheses to people who have lost a limb through a land mine explosion. (He also converts aluminium cans into cash for petrol to fuel Euroa Lions Club equipment such as wood cutters and pumps, but that’s another story.)
Ring-pulls, it seems, are not just little aluminium tags - they also contain a minute amount of titanium for added strength. There are about 3,500 ring-pulls to a kilogram, which is literally an arm and a leg to someone in need. Collection has become a major charitable effort by service clubs everywhere, and Jim Burnside can surely claim the title of Euroa’s ‘ring-pull king’.
So far, Jim has collected over 50 kg of them, delivered in 18kg bags to the Lions’ District Governor in Shepparton. The ring-pulls are passed on to the Freemasons, who sell them to Simsmetal by the tonne, which equates to about a million tags. Funds thus raised are sent to Rotary West Australia, which transfers the money to the Rotary Club of Chiang Mai, in Thailand, to be disbursed as needed to the Prosthesis Foundation at Chiang Mai University’s Faculty of Medicine. What a wonderful example of everyone working together for a worthy cause!
In 1991, the University set up a Mobile Artificial Legs Production Unit to help people who had been crippled by land mines. By 1999, this Unit had produced 4,650 legs alone, including a well-publicised foot in August last year for a 44-year-old female elephant.
So next time you take the lid off a beer, soft drink, pet food, baked beans or spaghetti can, twist off the ring-pull and slip it into your pocket or a bag to keep for Jim.
If you are having a party or organising a special event, collect the cans and take them around to Jim’s place afterwards, so that he can take off the ring-pulls and squash the rest, thus saving you space in your recycling bin.
Posted: Monday, February 13, 2006
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