Sisters Ariela and Alice had already been using Portugal's bottle return scheme to earn money but since June they have upped the ante: now instead of just returning their own bottles, they are asking their neighbours' for their plastic waste and making money off that too.
Since April this year, when the Volta scheme launched, plastic bottles in Portugal have a €0.10 deposit added to the cost. If you return the empty bottle to a supermarket with a Volta machine, you're given a receipt which can be exchanged for discounts or cash.
Ariela and Alice have big plans for their cash: Alice, who is ten, wants to do a three-week exchange in South Korea. Her sister Ariela, 13, wants to do the same in the United States
"They wrote little letters and I printed them with their project and the time when they were going to collect the bag," explains their mother, Karina Lauro, who moved to Portugal from Rio de Janeiro in 2024.
"They leave the bag at people's doors and every day, at nine o'clock in the evening, they go back to pick up that bag with the bottles, when there are any."
