Pop-Tops as Fundraisers?

A friend just called and asked me to save the pull tabs on my soda cans. She insisted that it would help save children whose cancer has made it necessary for them to have dialysis treatments. She was sure that this was true because the tabs were to be sent to the National Kidney Foundation, who would then give free dialysis to the children.

This is one of those "too easy and good to be true" fundraiser projects I keep being asked to participate in, so I called the National Kidney Foundation to find out if it were true.

Yes, the National Kidney Foundation does help find funding for children who need it. But they don't do it with pull-tabs. I was told to "please help stop that rumor." The National Kidney Foundation does not want or need any more aluminum pull tabs, and they are not able to find out, themselves, where this persistent rumor started.

So, what is the truth? I called several recycling companies to find out.

The truth is that the pull tabs are not "Pure" aluminum. They are an alloy, as is the rest of the can, though the alloy is slightly different. Even so, the price that is paid for the pull tabs by aluminum collection and recycling companies is exactly the same as the price paid for the whole can. Recently that price has been between 50 and 75 cents per pound.

A typical 12 oz aluminum can weighs just about a half ounce. It takes 28 to 32 cans to make a pound of aluminum. That's the whole can, including the pull tab. At 60 cents per pound it would take 625 pounds of cans, or about 18,750 cans to get about $375 from the recycling center cashier. On the other hand, it would take merely a million pull-tabs, from a million cans, to get the same approximate $375 from the same cashier.

Since the annual costs of dialysis are currently running between $60,000 and $100,000, we can estimate that it will take about 20,000,000,000 pull-tabs to cover the costs for any one patient in need of dialysis.

Do I believe in recycling? Absolutely, categorically, yes! Aluminum can recycling is a "closed loop," meaning that the product is recycled back into aluminum cans. Using recycled aluminum beverage cans to produce new cans means up to 20 times more cans be made for the same amount of energy. In 1993, the amount of energy saved was equivalent to 19.3 million barrels of oil, or 11.5 billion kilowatt hours of electricity.

So I will recycle, not only the pull-tab, but the entire can. Since my town doesn't do curbside pickup of aluminum or glass or newspaper or cardboard, I will continue to make my weekly trip to the recycling drop off center and deposit my items in the appropriate containers there. I do this because I would like to keep my home planet in good condition.

Do I believe I should help children with cancer? Absolutely!

So, I will also help with fundraisers, and I will also donate such money as I can. A few hours a month of my income and a few hours a year helping with fund-raisers will yield much more money for the children and their families who need it then popping the tops of aluminum cans off for the rest of my life could possibly provide.