Lebanon expects new Guinness World Record for biggest plastic bottles Christmas tree

Caroline Chabtini, who created the project of building a giant Christmas tree with plastic bottles, poses in front of the work in Chekka, northern Lebanon, on Dec. 16, 2019. The municipality of Chekka lit a Christmas tree made with plastic bottles on Monday. The tree, which is 28.5 meters tall and made with over 120,000 plastic bottles, was built in 20 days with support from villagers and scout troops. (Photo by Bilal Jawich/Xinhua)

BEIRUT, Dec. 16 (Xinhua) -- Lebanon's municipality of Chekka lightened a Christmas tree on Monday which is expected to win the Guinness World Record for being the largest model made from plastic bottles.

The tree, which is 28.5 meters tall made with 129,000 of water plastic bottles, was built in 20 days with support from villagers and scout troops after having collected bottles for around eight months with the help of social media networks.

"I was very excited when I first started this project because it aims at conveying a message about the importance of preserving the environment by saving it from this big amount of plastic bottles," Caroline Chabtini, the lady who created the project, told Xinhua.

Chabtini explained that she used social media asking people not to throw plastic bottles, helping her in collecting over 129,000 bottles which was way more than the number needed to break Mexico's world record.

In 2018, Mexico won the Guinness world record for the largest plastic bottle sculpture made of 98,000 plastic bottles used to create a Christmas tree weighing 22 tons, part of an environmental care campaign by Gobierno del Estado de Aguascalientes, Mexico.

Chabtini said that the tree will stay in place for one and half months and then the bottles will go to a recycling factory in Amioun, north of Lebanon.

"Guinness World Records asked me to send evidence to break the previous record," she said.

Supporters of Chabtini expressed their excitement about the new project and its goal.

"We were very happy to assist Caroline in building this tree because it has an environmental purpose which is among our priorities," Dani Mahfouz, assistant to the head of scout troops in Chekka, told Xinhua.

Meanwhile, Youssef El Sheikh, a volunteer, said he is ready to help Caroline in any such future projects while calling upon all villagers to start sorting waste in a bid to save the country from further pollution.

Alexander Kfoury, another volunteer, expressed his happiness about the benefit of the project by saying that money from recycling these bottles will go to the Red Cross.

"Also, this great work has gathered us in the village and it made us work like a team," he said.

Lebanon has been witnessing a serious garbage crisis since 2015 with successive governments failing to find a complete and effective solution to this problem which caused the level of pollution in the country to increase, leading to a rise in cancer cases among citizens.