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Drive Time and RT E-Radio 1,

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sponsored by Zorik. It's your

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future. Let Zorik help you protect it.

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Talk to us today about life and

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serious illness cover. Now, latest figures

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from the deposit return scheme show

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that 75 million containers were returned

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in the month of May, which

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was more than February, March and

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April combined. On average last month

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around 2.5 million

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containers were returned every day, but

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one group of hospital porters in

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Cork University Hospital is using the

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deposit return scheme to raise thousands

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of euro for a good cause.

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They're called the three Johnnies and

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one of them joins me now.

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John Collins, good evening and you're

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very welcome to Drive Time this evening. Good

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evening, Brian. So, John, tell me where did

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this idea come from and what exactly have you been doing?

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Tell them, Brian, it happened as a fun thing

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and we were there one night before we were

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on a night and

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we decided when they came on stream,

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we said, lads, what we'll do is

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we clicked all the bottles

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in our walls and at

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the end of our month, over nights, we'll

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have a Chinese for ourselves. We'll give

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ourselves a treat. So, I went home

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and they thought about us and I was thinking

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to myself, lads, no,

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this can't happen. This is because as

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the money we are benefiting out of,

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the hospital are paying for the bus to the side, so it wouldn't be

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fair. So, I think, I said, what should

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we do? I said, we give it to the C-Waste charity. So,

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the lads went on board, so I joined Lennon

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who takes the rubbish from the fifth floor down

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to the ground floor. So, he

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separated all the bottles for us down

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in the corridor and we bagged

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them. So, John Keenan then would

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be working in the knee department and the outpatient department. So,

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he bagged all the bags down and he clicked them all

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off there, down there off the

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housekeeping and

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the nurses and the doctors. Everyone came on board. So, he

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covers the GA and GB wars, GA,

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the psychology and cancer wars and they

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covered the puffin and the lady

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bars and 5B. So

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we went to all these bars and we asked

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them would they just keep the bars aside for

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us. So they did. So

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on the first week we collected 355 euro so

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we gave

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it to CUH charity. Second

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week we were up to 820 so we said

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lads this is doing great. So

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we just continued so we're up over

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2,200 euro now raised from the bottles.

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Yeah and that's the moment collecting around

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12,000 bottles of it. I'd

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say we're up to 15,000 bottles though. We

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were up to 11,452 last Tuesday. So we're after

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depositing this morning. I got 47

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euro and my friend John Keenan

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got another 77 euro. So

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there's a lot of bags. But

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the thing about is that when we're going up

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to the bottles people are

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saying to us we don't name a god you get all the

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bottles. And I said I was by

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some name with John Collins and they says I worked

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with the portal to CUH and they says we

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get all the stuff we said the port

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and stuff the catering stuff the housekeeping stuff

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the doctors and nurses came on board so

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they give us the bottles to read the

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puzzle and this lady came along to

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me she says she looked take

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them she sheared the bag about and she said she goes

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to the receipt and I said put that towards the charity.

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So I said no no no no it's just not like that.

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I said I want to be like that but a lot of people

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are doing that moment to us. So

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it's fantastic. And briefly John you're looking to

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spread the gospel of this initiative you want

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businesses to come forward with bottles don't you

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across Leesign. Yeah we'd love it.

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We'd love it because there's so many charities out there

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looking for money so it's a great idea for children

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to start saving even for if they were on a

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school trip. So just get a

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few bottles together and pay for the we

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say the trip children or more be fantastic

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with just saving and taking a lot of

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pressure off the parents as well to know with the money. So

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lots to run there. John

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Collins of the three Johnnys better

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not mention the two Johnnys. around here. Thanks

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very much for joining us on DriveTime this evening.