2005-01-12

It Pays to Recycle

OSLO, Norway Arild Tofte and Kaare Heggdal know that recycling pays, but they weren't quite prepared for the jackpot that a scrapped cash machine contained.

It was still full of cash.

Enough to buy a house and take a luxury vacation. The two Norwegians run a recycling company in the western Norway town of Aaroedalen, and had been hired by the Sparebanken Moere bank to remove an outdated automatic teller machine, or ATM, from a gas station, media reported Wednesday. Tofte, 30, said the woman on duty at the gas station was more than a little skeptical when two men showed up with a trolley and a truck, wanting to remove her ATM.

"She calmed down when I explained that the machine was empty and that we had a contract to pick it up," Tofte told the local Romsdals Budstikke newspaper. During their rounds to pick up more scrap, they got a call saying a security guard was seeking the machine.

"The guy was apparently a bit agitated," said Tofte. "He was very eager to empty the cash from the machine." The cash was removed. The bank — which blamed the incident on a communications mix-up — didn't say how much was in the ATM. But Tofte said the guard who emptied the machine told him it was enough to buy a house, take a luxury vacation and still have money to burn.

No comments: