An urban legend comes to life

Almost everyone knows someone who has collected pop tabs for a charitable cause. There’s always some good soul in the community who hauls in loads of the things to pass on as a donation.

But where do they end up?

It seems they get passed on and on and on, and never end up anywhere. Currently, Jasper Elementary is running a pop tab drive in support of Juvenile Diabetes.
Teacher Judith Desmeules said in an email that the tabs will be sent to a Juvenile Diabetes Foundation.

Barb Armstrong, regional manager for the Edmonton chapter of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, said any they receive are sent on to the Edmonton Legion, which sends a donation to the Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton. The public affairs department at the Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton is working on tracking down the answer.

Halia Wong, member of the Norwood Legion branch in Edmonton, said another member takes away tabs collected by the Legion, but that she didn’t know where they ended up.

Myrna McFadyen, member of the Kingsway Legion branch in Edmonton, said the same. “An older fella takes them for wheelchairs,” McFadyen said.
Pop tab redemption, it seems, may be an urban legend.

The legend has variations, including what’s collected, whether it’s pop tabs or foils from cigarette packs, and what will be redeemed, from wheelchairs to dialysis treatment.

Supposedly it goes that stories such as the pop tab legend get started as a way to lessen people’s guilt about unhealthy behaviour such as drinking pop or smoking cigarettes.

However, in some cases the urban legend has reportedly come true.

Jan Brunvand, professor emeritus of the University of Utah, is the author of the Encyclopedia of Urban Legends. In that book he writes, “... legend, to some extent, has become reality.”

In an email to the Fitzhugh he wrote, “After years of the spread of the story that large collections of some otherwise useless objects could be redeemed for some benefit – usually medically related – the Ronald McDonald House program actually did start a campaign to collect pull tabs (as I call them) to be recycled as a fund raiser.

“They distributed little cardboard house-shaped collecting boxes with the slogan ‘Help pick up the tab for the Ronald McDonald House.’ When I queried the company about why whole cans were not collected, and I pointed out the relative small worth of pull tabs versus the cost of mailing them, I was met with ill humor directed toward those who would ‘spoil the fun’ and specious arguments about health concerns and the supposed inconvenience of saving whole cans.

“Of course it would solve these problems if only they encouraged people to recycle their cans in their own communities and simply send in the profit as a check to McDonalds, but I guess that, too, would come under the heading of ‘spoiling the fun.’ I’m not sure if this collecting campaign is still going on, but for sure some people continue to save pull tabs believing they can be redeemed for some worthy purpose.

“Incidentally, in 1988, Reynolds Aluminum and the National Kidney Foundation launched a campaign called ‘Keep Tabs on Your Cans,’ debunking the pull-tab stories and urging people simply to recycle their aluminum and donate the money to charity.
“I have a poster advertising this effort, and I actually spoke at a local kick-off event held at a recycling centre. I can’t remember much else about this effort, but I doubt that it did much to dampen the efforts of avid pull tab collectors.”

So, kudos for pop tab collectors for their good charitable effort. Here’s hoping they won’t end up with piles of the things, with nowhere to send them.