British Couple Funds Honeymoon By Recycling Litter

A British couple spent three months collecting and recycling litter to pay for their honeymoon flights.

John and Ann Till took thousands of cans and bottles to a recycling centre at a nearby Tesco supermarket after they discovered that for every four recycled items, they earned a reward point which was they could then converted to air miles.

The couple came up with the idea while buying gas at Tesco, where an automated recycling unit that gave loyalty-card points had been installed for a trial period.

They had enough money for a cruise to New York but could not afford the flights home, so the couple started scouring the streets of their home town for rubbish, clocking up the miles for their dream honeymoon.

"We wanted to make our honeymoon special and were trying to think of ways to raise money for it," said John. "I saw on the machine that you got a Tesco Clubcard point for every four items you put in. For every 250 points you got 600 British Airways miles."

"We worked out that it would be possible to turn rubbish into our flights - as long as we had enough."

"At the very beginning, we were concerned it would not be achievable, but then we saw the amount of rubbish out there. It's not to say the pavements were awash with litter, it was when we looked over walls and in the undergrowth."

"While it was nice to get the rubbish for the good cause, it was disappointing to see there are clearly a lot of litter louts in our town," said John.

"But it did raise a smile when we were in business class on the flight back to Gatwick to think that the litter louts of Petersfield had paid for the pleasure."

"There was enough rubbish out there to fly us to the moon and back."

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