Pull Tabs

The Jazz Bus: The Urban Legend of the Pull Tab Collectors
Sometimes I open my email to find that my immediate attention is needed to help save someone’s life. Knowing I have no such power to save lives I politely research the requests and more times than not find the information to be false. However, I did and have been caught on one, an urban legend if you will, for many years. The mysterious “pull tab collection” to save the world phenomena.
Over the last few years I have been faithfully saving my pull tabs from aluminum beverage cans for a friend. I was lead to believe these tabs would go to numerous worthwhile organizations which would use the recycled materials or money from their recycling efforts to help offset the cost of dialysis for kidney patients, for diabetic’s medications, to help purchase wheel chairs for disabled veterans, or to aid in the care of seriously ill children. After rinsing the container for recycling, I would religiously pull the tab off, place it in a cup by the sink, and when the cup was full, transfer the tabs to a plastic Ziploc, knowing in my heart I have done a good deed for my fellow man. When I would see my friend I hand him a filled Ziploc or two. Proud as a peacock, this has been going on for a few years. Until, I gave a few hundred of these tops to my friend’s wife who looked at me curiously and shook her head dismissing the act with a simple request, “stop”. No reason was given, just a disapproving “stop”, like Mom used to say many years ago. Hmmm.
Like a good researcher I decided to investigate the origin of this collection and what had become of all the tops I and hundreds like me have faithfully collected to help save mankind from extinction. In a few clicks of the computer I realized that somewhere, someone, might be my friend, has a garage filled with thousands of pull tabs that are basically worthless. The aluminum used in making the tab is the same as the can itself so there is no “special value” or “special alloy” in the pull tab as I was led to believe. The Diabetes Society does not collect tabs to offset the cost of dialysis treatments, nor does the Veteran’s melt it down for wheelchair parts for their disabled brethren. The only organization that would accept any such collection was The Ronald McDonald’s House in St. Louis but doing so only as a service for those of us who were duped into collecting these items. Ronald “does not encourage collection”. The question is, why?
One million (1,000,000) pull tabs has the recycle value of $366.00, that’s about 3 ½ cents for each 100 collected. Collecting, sorting, transporting, and finding a place to recycle for cash and the record keeping involved is not cost effective when compared to the value of the collected items. In fact anyone taking on this endeavor would be losing hundreds of dollars, not making one red cent. I found most organization would prefer you collect pennies, convert them into cash and send in a check. Done. My pull tab cup has now been replaced by a penny jar. Saving the world, one cent at a time.
Jazzbus@gmail.com jazzbus.blogspot.com