I know several people who collect the pull tabs from soda cans for various charities and I am wondering if it is really worth the effort. The tabs are just scrap aluminum, which is worth approximately $1.00 US /pound. How many tabs does it take to make 1 pound? How much do charities spend on the effort with storing and transporting them?
Thx, burpo. Thx, Cecil. I have been wondering about this. For years I sent pull tabs to school with my kids. The school must have a warehouse full of tabs, somewhere. I have never heard or seen the proof that a big check went to any charity.
Snopes says pull tabs are worth nothing more than their scrap value. 100 pull tabs are worth about 3.5 cents. There aren’t any big checks going to charities because of people collecting pull tabs.
And yet there are people who think they’re somehow more “efficient” than the whole can, on the theory that they weigh more per cubic foot. I guess it never occurs to them to step on the cans before bagging them.
Do any cans have detachable “pull tabs” anymore?
I guess in modern times, since the elimination of detachable tabs, people are pulling off the little lever that punctures the can. (Is there a name for that thing?)
Yes, that’s the pull tab these days, rather than the older style where you had to pull it completely off the can.
We call it the can cracker.
I tend to pull them off if I’m drinking from the can as my mustache can get caught it it.
I suppose as I get the full 5 cents back if I return the can without the pull tab, I could make a profit by selling the 100 tabs for 3.5 cents. It does sound like I’m cheating the soda company though. What fraction of the weight of a can is in the pull tab?
A Coke can(Diet, Caffeine Free) weighs 13.17 grams, the pull tab alone is .26-.27 grams.
About 2.05%
(My scale only measures to .01 gram resolution)
Really, coach? Is it a postal scale? One of those pen scales you clip a letter to? Are you my Dad? I need a drink! 
Just an ordinary pocket-size digital scale I bought to weigh out …powder.
Caffeine if you must know. The Coke is left over from what my late wife drank.
On the other hand, my local recycler will give you around $0.45 per pound for aluminum cans, that is, the entire can, which is better than for aluminum scrap and will save you having to yank off the tabs. If you want to use aluminum cans for charity find a recycling giving a decent price for the can themselves, turn them in, then sent the money to a charity of your choice.
I can’t tell you the fraction of the weight. I’m assuming you are talking about getting a state-mandated deposit back in mentioning the five cents. That’s not really a distributor buying your aluminum. Depending on the structure of the state program they might be getting payments for administration of the program already if not being allowed to keep some/all of the deposits for unreturned cans. Since the tabs are not required to get your own money back, you’ve been essentially donating them to a non-charity.
It’s much more lucrative to take them to a state with a high deposit return. Some places give ten cents per bottle or can. It’s just the transport that can become too expensive.
You gotta find a friend with a mail truck . . .
A lot depends on how far you have to travel - my recycler is only a little bit out of my way for a normal work commute, making the transport costs negligible. To go to a state with any deposit return would be at least a 90 minute drive one way, so… probably a greater return for me to go to the local guy. Your mileage may vary,
This sounds analogous to coin clipping. The can (or coin) has a nominal value, but there’s also value in the raw metal. In addition to pulling the tab off, you could carefully trim away small amounts of the can in a way that’s unnoticeable, return the can for the deposit, and sell the trimmings for scrap. But it sounds like far too much effort for the profit you’d make.
In the extreme case, the machines that take the cans only care about the bar code, so you could trim all but that away. But then you have to attach it to something bulky enough to trigger the sensor on the machine, which means you’re putting something other than aluminum in the aluminum bin and possibly bollixing up the machine. All that for the scrap value of a single can? Not worth it.
I know of a school that collects recycleable cans and bottles as a fundraising function. I suspect most of them are donated by the parents, but perhaps they get some from donation drives or something. But it takes a whole lot of cans to get a significant amount of money (it’s also a lot of work to redeem them), so it’s probably not for anything especially expensive.