Since this is sort of a poll, I guess it goes in this forum…
The school where I teach has, naturally, a teachers’ lounge. In this lounge sits a coffee can with a sign on it urging people to donate their can tabs, so they can go to such-and-such charity.
I have with me the printed article from snopes that de-bunks the whole thing. But I haven’t revealed it yet. I asked one co-worker how to broach the topic, and she told me that it’s best just to let the tab-collector think that she’s doing some good in the world. But I’m having a hard time keeping this to myself.
I would break the bad news, as the tab collector sounds like a nice person, and would probably redirect their effort towards other more fruitful endeavors.
It notes that the Ronald McDonald House (which has been the culprit behind tabbing at my childrens’ schools) website claims they get $474 per million tabs collected.
So, I’d put a sticky note on the coffee can reading:
“21,097 tabs gets this charity $10. Put $10 in here now and you can skip collecting the tabs from your soda cans for the rest of your life.”
There are little cardboard Ronald McDonald houses all over our company’s campus (three buildings) specifically to collect tabs. I mean, these are little houses created and distributed by Ronald McDonald House. Those things fill up fast, as there’s at least one in every break room, by most vending machines and in the main gathering places around here. I’d bet that our company alone manages to collect hundreds of thousands (if not more than a million) tabs in a year. And that’s a few hundred bucks the charity wouldn’t otherwise get. So where’s the harm in collecting them?
The Ronald McDonald house does collect the tabs…it has been one of Pi Theta Kappa service projects for the last 2 years. For every gallon, I believe, one child will receive a chemotreatment. Also, another large hospital in our area does the same thing. I hate to go against snopes, but you might want to check up before you “break the news”
The sad thing here is that a teacher would beleive in this. As Snopes points out, the collection of these tabs is hardly worth the effort. If your school has fifty teachers, in the building five days a week for forty weeks a year each drinking and donating six can tabs a day, in an entire year you’d only gather 60,000 tabs, worth about $28.
jesleigh I hate to tell you this but a gallon of aluminium would not pay for a chemotherapy treatment. Snopes is a very respected source of information - have you read the Snopes article? As they point out it would be better to collect pennies in place of the aluminium tabs, if you did you would have $10,000 per million pennies rather than $300 per million tabs. I know people may have put a lot of effort into the collection of tabs but wouldn’t it be better to change what you collect sooner rather than face dissapointment in the future?
How many tabs do they have? Because if there are a few hundred, you could put them in a sock and use it to beat some sense into the person who put the can there.
Or you could just print out the Snopes page and put it in the can, but my way is <i>much</i> more satisfying.
Forgive me for pointing this out, but they are not worthless if they have worth, no matter how small it is. 400 million tabs collected is quite a large number. Even if it’s a slow climb, it’s something for nothing.
Getting even a dollar from most people is hard enough. It’s more of a novelty and easier to give something that you plan to throw away.
It must work; $300,000 for something that’s not so worthless.
If money worked, Toys for Tots would pull in a whole lot more over the holidays. I agree, a penny would be easier, but how many pennies make it into the Jerry’s Kids box at the supermarket? Just the fact that 400 million of those were collected is crazy. Imagine if each one was a dollar.
She’s not saying it does, she’s saying that for every gallon of tabs collected McDonalds DONATES the amount for a chemotherapy treatment. What the real issue is is if they’d donate the amount anyway as part of their charity budget. We had a similar discussion a few weeks ago about the Yoplait lids that people were supposed to mail in so money could go to breast cancer research.
Did you bother to read the entire article? Like, for example, this part:
Bolding mine. RMH will accept tabs, true, but only because people were already collecting them due to the urban legend. That doesn’t make it an efficient, effective or useful form of charity. It’s purely a “feel-good” thing for the donors and I’d bet the main benefit to RMH is good public relations rather than any sort of financial help.
It’s an “If you can’t beat 'em, join 'em” philosophy.
