Yellowknife (Sep 04/06) - Recycling materials isn't just about preserving the environment.

For one Yellowknife business, recycling bottles and cans is a way of helping members of the community.

The employees at Fraser Tower Hotel Suites have been collecting all recyclable materials to raise money for charitable pursuits for about three-and-a-half years.

The Yellowknife Bottle Shop collects 30 pallets of beer bottles, with 168 dozen bottles on each pallet. Seventy-five thousand cans are brought in each week and crushed into bricks weighing 27 pounds.

"My co-worker and I used to see all this garbage around," said Donna Simms, a Fraser Tower laundry attendant.

Realizing beer bottles could be exchanged for cash, the hotel's approximately 30 employees decided to do more than throw them away.

Simms said she couldn't say how much they've raised since the program started, but said lately they've raised about $100 a month.

In past years the money was used to adopt children and families during Christmas.

But just last year, a donation was made to a former employee who is terminally ill. The money went to cover the woman's insurance for an entire year.

Clayton Morrell, owner and operator of Yellowknife Recycling Services, drops the recycled goods off for Fraser Tower.

He calls the idea unique.

"I haven't seen anything to this level," said Morrell.

But it doesn't stop there. Keeping the outside clean of garbage that can't be recycled is another one of the employees' goals.

"We have a garbage chart," said manager Catherine Travis.

Employees collect pieces of garbage and can win prizes for finding the most trash.

So far this year, Travis said workers have collected more than 78,000 pieces of garbage - this is on top of what the two people hired to clean around the building found.

"We like to be clean," said Travis.

Simms said the employees are planning to keep the fundraising program up and running as long as she works at Fraser Tower.