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A legend this good-hearted should be true. But it's not. And a lot of really nice people end up sadly disappointed when they eventually discover all their hard work pretty much went for naught. Pull tabs have no special value that makes them redeemable for time on dialysis machines, or indeed which make them worth far in excess of their ordinary scrap metal recycle value. While a handful of charitable concerns (including McDonald's Ronald McDonald House and Shriners Hospitals for Children) accept donations of can tabs, said tabs fetch such groups no more than the items' ordinary recycle value (more on that later in this article). The National Kidney Foundation (NKF) says this of the dialysis rumor that has been dogging them for quite a while: I don't think anyone is ever going to figure out where what have come to be called redemption rumors first came from. The notion of something of little value (pull-tabs, empty cigarette packs) being collected by good-hearted people and then turned over to a public-spirited company who would redeem them for an item that would help the less fortunate (time on a dialysis machine, a wheelchair, a seeing eye dog) goes back a long way — ours is far from the first generation to fall for this canard. A 2002 article described a common experience with the rumor: There's nothing special about pull tabs which makes them exchangeable for time on a dialysis machine. These bits of metal are worth nothing more than the ordinary recycle value of the aluminum they contain. Though rumor claims pull tabs are especially valuable because they're made of pure aluminum, they're actually formed from an aluminum alloy, just like the rest of the can (albeit of a slightly different type). A million pull tabs have a recycle value of about $366 U.S. And that's before you factor in what it costs to collect, store, and transport them to a recycling center which will pay cash for them. When you consider the time and effort it takes to collect a million of anything, it's a wonder anyone would go to all that trouble for a mere $366. Far better to ask everyone you know for a penny in place of each pull tab they would have given you — at least then when you were done collecting your million, you'd have $10,000 to donate to your charity. To put this in even clearer perspective, 100 pull tabs have a scrap metal value of about 31⁄2¢. That old something for nothing dream gets people every time. Spring 1997 produced a poignant example of this madness in the form of a news story about a crippled child in a remote Canadian community and that community's good-hearted belief that if only they could save up eight million pull tabs, they could get her a much-needed wheelchair. The local community health center made a project of collecting these little bits of metal, and it was only after they'd gathered more than a million that they realized not only didn't they have a buyer for them, they also hadn't figured out how they were going to transport them from their town (roughly 2500 miles north of Montreal) to any place with a recycling plant: This tale had a happy ending in that the Royal Canadian Legion arranged and paid for the transportation costs of getting all those pull tabs to a recycling centre, someone else donated a used wheelchair, Air Canada shipped the chair for free to the little girl, and a Canadian wheelchair manufacturer also offered to make a brand-new chair for her. Others whose hearts were in the right place haven't been as fortunate. The experience of Dave and Beryl Hodge of Houston is typical. They saved pull tabs for two years, enlisting the help of friends, neighbors and relatives in their project. A local service club (who had themselves been taken in by this rumor) had led them to believe these tabs could be redeemed for dialysis treatment for a kidney patient: Rumor not only dashes the hopes of those trying to do a good deed; it also causes endless headaches for those in the recycling business: One of the many companies victimized by this rumor is Reynolds Aluminum. They've come up with an effective reply to the pull-tabs question: a redirection of these lovingly-collected tabs into their normal recycling program, for which they pay standard scrap metal rates. (Obviously, collecting whole cans would be far more effective, but facts have never slowed down anyone running with a good rumor firmly between his teeth.) As one of their 1993 brochures read: (Reynolds has since sold off its recycling operation to Wise Metals.) Seeing as how folks were bound and determined to collect pull-tabs for charity, in 1987 McDonald's found it a good idea to get into the act. Their Pop Tab Collection program is a response to pull tab mania, and it at least provides folks with a place to dump the tabs they've been hoarding over the years in the belief they could use them to purchase dialysis time for an ailing child. Tabs dropped off at various McDonald's are taken to a local recycling company, and the money made from selling them for their scrap value is given to the local Ronald McDonald House to help defray operating costs. (Ronald McDonald houses are inexpensive family lodgings located near hospitals. Families of sick children stay there so as to be close to their hospitalized child. Typically, it costs the house $40 a night a room to operate and families are asked to make a donation of $10 a night when they stay. The shortfall is made up through various charitable endeavors, of which the pull-tab collection and recycling program is but one.) It needs be stressed yet again that pull tabs are far from found money — even the Shriners Hospitals for Children, another organization that uses money received from the recycling of aluminum tabs for a good cause, noted in April 2007 that the recycling price for aluminum tabs is $0.50 to $0.70 per pound, which means that even at the upper end of that price range, they're only getting about $427 per million tabs collected. Prospective donors could still do far more good by organizing a local soda can recycling program and donating the proceeds to the Ronald McDonald House (or any other charity). The Bottom Line: No charitable organization will pay out a premium (in cash, goods, or services) for pull tabs from aluminum cans. Some of them will indeed accept donations of pull tabs, but all they pay (or receive) in exchange for those tabs is their marginal value as scrap aluminum. Anyone gathering pull tabs for charity would do far better to collect whole cans; accumulating nothing but pull tabs is like eschewing quarters in order to collect pennies. (From time to time, various companies will run programs under which they offer to donate money to charities in exchange for consumers' collecting and returning some item of product packaging [e.g., pull tabs, boxtops, wrappers], but such companies only accept packaging from their own products, and their object in operating these programs is to promote and advertise their brands.) Next time someone asks you to donate a few pull-tabs for a good cause, donate a few facts instead. You'll be doing everyone a favor.
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