The Great Bottle Drive

21 The Great Bottle Drive Our hockey team wanted to raise some money to go on a trip, so we decided to have a bottle drive. Bottle drives are good because they raise money and the glass is recycled. On top of that, people are usually happy to get rid of their bottles. We went from house to house in our neighbourhood collecting old bottles, new bottles, big bottles and small bottles - bottles in every colour and shape. When we finished, we had collected over 1, 000 bottles. We took them to a place that buys glass. There, we began to throw them into a huge metal container. There was an older woman there who was throwing out bottles too. She smiled at us. I was about to throw out a strange-looking old brown bottle, when I heard a loud voice cry out, “ Wait! Don't throw out that bottle! " But it was too late. I had thrown it, and it smashed into thousands of pieces. The older woman ran over to me and said, “ I think that was very old. It was worth some money. "

" Oh no! " we all cried. After all the work we had done, I had just thrown money out the window. We were all very disappointed. Then Anthony said, " Look! Is this the same kind of bottle?" The old lady looked at it. “ It's not as rare, " she said. “ But it's still worth a lot of money. " We were excited. The next day, the woman took us to an antique dealer. He looked it over and offered us $500 for the bottle. We were amazed! We had only raised $50 in total from all the other bottles. We found some other bottles in our collection that were worth a few dollars, but I kept thinking about the one I threw out. I finally had the courage to ask the woman, “ The one I threw away, how much was that worth?" Then I changed my mind. “ No! Don't tell me. I don't want to know. " That day, I learned to be careful when throwing any- thing out! It can sometimes be reused and it might be worth a lot of money!