Saturday, March 10, 2007

Message in a bottle? No - recycle it instead

Incurable romantic Stuart Conway has spent the last 10 years throwing messages in a bottle into the sea off Britain - but now his local town council says it's time to recycle.

A quirky eccentric ever eager to spread a little happiness, he has a website offering to print out people's innermost secrets, pop them in an empty bottle and hurl the lovelorn missives into the English Channel.

The self-styled "postman for emotions" has personally "mailed" almost 4,000 messages - but only a sprinkling of them have washed up on beaches in France, Germany, Sweden and the Netherlands.

But media attention for the offbeat service proved to be a doubled-edged sword. Brighton and Hove Council would like him to desist.

"We appreciate that historically sending messages in bottles can be seen as an exciting and romantic thing to do," a council spokesman said.

"But in reality it can cause serious injury when broken glass is washed up on the beach. We would suggest that Mr Conway recycles his bottles and investigates some of the many other exciting ways to send messages overseas."

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