Joe Russo, a third-grade teacher at Aviano Elementary School, coordinates an effort by the Aviano military community to collect plastic bottle caps to raise money for a local nonprofit organization that houses cancer patients and their families. (Russ Rizzo / S&S)
AVIANO Air Base, Italy — Every few months, Joe Russo backs his gray Ford Mondeo station wagon into a small garage just outside Aviano, Italy. He opens the back door and unloads trash bags filled with plastic bottle caps.
On Monday, the take was seven trash bags each filled with at least 50 pounds of caps mostly from water and soft drink bottles.
“Pretty amazing, huh?,” Russo said as he stared at the black heaps.
The caps are collected by students and teachers at Aviano Elementary School — where Russo teaches third grade — and other members of the Aviano military community. Russo takes the donations to a local nonprofit organization that houses cancer patients and their families, and the house recycles the caps for money.
The money earned helps buy equipment for the house, called Casa Via di Natale, which has 68 beds including 12 beds in an upstairs hospice for terminal patients. Located next to Aviano’s cancer hospital, called Centro di Riferimento Oncologico, the house functions much like the Fisher House does next to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.
The house began collecting bottle caps three years ago, when a woman from Cordenone came up with the idea, said Carmen Gallini, director of Casa Via di Natale. As word spread around Aviano that recycled bottle caps could help the house, donations began flooding in, Gallini said. Russo caught wind of the program early on and encouraged other to participate.
After three years, the house has earned 30,000 euro, or about $40,000, from donated bottle caps, Gallini said.
Gallini said it was difficult to know how much the Aviano military community has contributed to the overall total, because people throughout the region bring donations to the house’s garage. But she said the contribution has been significant.
The U.S. military has helped the house in other ways, Gallini said, including digging the foundation for the house when it moved to a larger location in 1995.
Collection bins for bottle caps are sprinkled throughout Aviano Air Base at places such as the identification card office, the waiting room at the finance office and, naturally, the entrance to Aviano Elementary School.
One of Russo’s pupils, 9- year-old Arlyn Lisondra, brought in 1,000 caps recently, filling one trash bag. Arlyn got to skip one homework assignment in return.
Brendan Adler, 9, said his dad, Eric, a Black Hawk helicopter pilot, keeps a bin at work.
“It’s really been a community effort,” Russo said.
Gallini said the money raised by bottle cap donations is a small portion of the $2.4 million Casa Via di Natale must raise each year to operate without the help of government funding.
But she is quick to offer one of her favorite phrases: “Tutte gocce fanno un fiume fino al mare.”
It means, “Every drop creates a river that ends in the ocean.”
For information about how to help, call Joe Russo at 632-5677 or e-mail him at joseph.russo@eu.dodea.edu.
