Royal Mail used 4 billion rubber bands in the last 5 years
February 21st, 2011 - 10:49 pm ICT by Aishwarya BhattLondon, Feb 21 (THAINDIAN NEWS) Under the Freedom of Information Act the Royal Mail has revealed to the Daily Telegraph that it has used more than 4 billion rubber bands in the past five years.
The company uses the bands to tidy letters together. The information the company gave to the newspaper revealed that as many as 2 million rubber bands are used daily by workers of the Royal Mail. Over the past five years, the company has spent almost £5 million.
Royal Mail has come under criticism for the use of the bands. Though the company claims that it uses biodegradable bands, environmentalists say that the rubbers could harm wild animals.
Keep Britain Tidy in 2009 collected about 13,000 rubber bands from the public. The bands were then sent to the Royal Mail to discard the bands.
Dickie Felton of Keep Britain Tidy told reporters that, “We accept that dropping an elastic band is hardly the worst littering offence in the world, but none-the-less it is litter. The bands look terrible strewn on the floor and pose a choking danger to pets and wildlife.”
The Royal Mail however says that might not happen because most of the bands are reused in the United Kingdom.
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Tags: 5 million, daily telegraph, elastic band, environmentalists, freedom of information, freedom of information act, london feb, offence, pets, royal mail, rubber bands, rubbers, united kingdom, wild animals