Parking meters recycled as collecting boxes

Here's one fundraising idea that made me smile. In Canada the City of Montréal's retired metal, mechanical parking meters have been recycled as fundraising collecting boxes to help the city's homeless people.

Robust, hard to miss (especially now that they've all been painted by local celebrities), low-maintenance, and secure, the 70 parking meters were converted in 2007 by the city's parking authority, in association with the Ville-Marie borough and the L'Itinéraire newspaper.

They are known as ParcoDons, and in their first three years they have raised C$23,000. Organisers anticipate them raising C$40,000 over the next three years.

This is just one of many inspiring fundraising and social enterprise ideas I've come across on Springwise - your daily fix of entrepreneurial ideas.

What does your local authority plan to do with its older parking meters that it must, presumably, at some point replace with newer versions?