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Hybrid trash can with slot machine

15.07.2003

How to get the main consumers of non-alcoholic and low-alcohol drinks in cans - young people to throw empty cans only in the trash? Two graduate students from the University of Lyon (France) came up with a fruitful idea and managed to implement it.

Six cabinets resembling drinks vending machines appeared on campus. There is no slot for coins in them, but there is a round hole where you can push an empty jar. As soon as this is done, in the front wall of the cabinet, behind the glass, three reels with drawings begin to spin, like in a slot machine. If all three reels land on the same symbols, you get a win for an empty jar. It can be a lollipop, a keychain, a pack of chewing gum, a ballpoint pen, and if you are especially lucky, a leather case for a mobile phone.

On average, every fourth jar brings a win. The innovation aroused the enthusiasm of the inhabitants of the campus, and each machine began to hand over to scrap metal collectors about 500 cans a week. Resourceful students, having not yet received a diploma (they study at the Faculty of Economics, and the defense will certainly be successful), founded their own company.

Machine guns have appeared in stadiums, parks and cultural centers of Lyon, and by next year their number in the city will reach two hundred. Then the company intends to expand its activities to the whole of France. Sixty per cent of the young Lyons interviewed admitted that before the advent of these devices, they always threw an empty jar anywhere.

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