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Recyclable bottles used in slalom course construction Shiga Kogen in Yamanouchi Town will be the site of the slalom skiing events of the Nagano Games. The events should be popular, and thousands of people are expected to come see the skiing. Three tunnels have been built to let people and snowmobiles pass under the race course without disturbing the competition. To make room for the the tunnels, the course must be built about 3 meters (10 feet) above the ground.
Originally, Olympic organizers had planned to pile snow around the tunnels. But piling that much snow with snow-making machines is a lot of work, and very expensive. It was decided to use clear plastic drink bottles--known as PET bottles--instead of snow. A drive to collect the bottles needed began in August in Yamanouchi and other nearby areas. Nearly 7,700 elementary and middle school students, as well as many households in the local towns, worked on the collection. In all, almost 122,000 bottles were collected for use in the project. Just one school--Yamanouchi Middle School--managed to collect 3,261 bottles by early October!
The bottles were then packed into nearly 2,700 plastic bags, which were piled up around the tunnels on October 15. By using these bottles instead of snow, the project became about half as expensive as it would have been. And not only money, but resources, too, are being saved. After the Olympic and Paralympic Games are finished and the tunnels dismantled, the bottles will all be recycled.
