A BOTTLE EXCHANGE.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 10011, 8 June 1895, Page 5

A BOTTLE EXCHANGE.

One of the oldest exchanges whlo exists, and one of which few people, w imagine, have heard, ia the Londb 1 Mineral Water Bottle Exohange. Bom years ago, it seems, most of the miner* water makers of London and the sui rounding district were in considerabl , trouble over their empty bottles. Sod water bottles and those intended fo other similar beverages, have, of neo essity, to be made very strong, and ar therefore, a matter of sonic expanse to maker, costing in many cases a gooi deal more than their contents sold-fo so that the loss of the bottles which wa constantly ocourrlng, became a eeriou matter. It was comparatively easy, b; blowing bis name on a glass, for a make to prevent another man niing his bottles bat that only made them useless to any one except the rlghtfnl owner. Somi geolup.tberefore.eyolvedtheideftof start ing a sort of "oloaring house" for minera water bottles, whereby, at small expensi each man might have his '' empties' returned to him for the purpose of beinj refilled. The idea graw. and at the nintl annual meeting of the Bottle Exchange which was held rncantly, the Chairmai stated that It had 257 membera and eigh branches within fifty miles of London He further added that tho ouetom ol seizing each other's bottles in the tradt —not at the dinner— was dying out and that last year there were only nineteer prosecution for this sort of thing. Hundreds of thousands of pounds were invested in the business, and tho trade was now a really important industry. The_ Secretary of the exobaogo said that during the last seven years, nearly 13.000,000 bottles, representing ovei £50,000 had been recovered from dnsl yards and returned to their owners, According to last year's report about 4,000,000 boitles that might have been lost wore returned by the Exchange to their owners. Of this number nearly 2,500,000 were rescued from dust-heapß. The Exohange buys all bottles of the right sort brought to it and returns them to the owners, who are thus spared the trouble of hunting round for themselves and the lobs involved by not doing so,