CLEANING PLASTIC BOTTLES

We often visit one of my Bulgarian teachers, Ivanka, an elderly lady who lives in the summer months in a very small hamlet at the end of a track. She has water from a spring and a little further away is a well so when we visit we take her supplies of drinking water. On one occasion we had no more large water containers for the next visit and all she had was one rather greenish plastic water bottle. So, she picked a stalk or two of stinging nettle, put them in the bottle with a little water, swished it around a bit and, amazingly, the bottle was clean.