While the rich live large partaking of canned drinks and recklessly disposing of them, former abducted girls and women in northern Uganda have found an ingenious way of profiting from the pop-tops.
Thanks to the vision of Sister Rosemary Nyirumbe, the director of St Monica Tailoring School in Gulu, the former abductees make beautiful bags and purses using the pop-ups.
Sister Nyirumbe explains that the trainees go to hotels, pick up empty drink cans, return to the school and remove the pop-tops.
Using threads, they tie up the pop-tops to create artistically great bags and purses.
They also make beautiful necklaces, bracelets, rosaries and fabric bags from paper.
Called wisdom beads and jewelry, the women roll small strips of discarded paper, varnish them, dry them and then make them into beautiful jewelry.
The items are sent abroad, mainly to the United States, where they are sold from between five to 20 dollars.
The proceeds go directly back to the young women at the tailoring school.
Sister Nyirumbe says for each item sold half of the money goes to the maker while the other half is kept and used to buy a sewing machine and other accessories on graduation.
This, explains Sister Nyirumbe, enables the girls and women to return to their homes with tools to eke out a living.
Sister Nyirumbe is also spearheading the building of environmentally friendly houses using empty mineral water plastic bottles.
Already a two-roomed house is under construction at the centre, an attempt of ridding the environment of the bottles.
