Pop tab drive has more to do with good intentions

Last week’s story on the mystery of pop tabs left some readers feeling that more clarification was needed. So, here it is.

Though a number of people seem to believe so, pop tabs have no special value. They are worth about 25 cents per pound for their aluminum. Somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 tabs make up one pound. Therefore, at a conservative estimate, 12,000 tabs are worth $2. That’s 1,000 cases of a dozen cans of pop.

On the other hand, if the cans were left attached to the tabs, they yield 10 cents each at a bottle depot. That means that those 12,000 tabs, with cans, are worth $1,200, instead of the $2 earned by the tabs.

Yet organizations continue to collect tabs and recycle them as a fundraiser. One such group is Jasper Elementary.

Principal Raymond Blanchette-Dubé said the tab drive idea was brought forward by a student. “It is something that he and his mother have decided to do and we want to support him in this process,” he said. “Because the can tab is the driving force behind this project for kids with diabetes, this is why he’s involved with it, because he sees a benefit to it, and that’s why we’re trying to support him with this.”

Though the tabs collected by the school will likely yield less than the cost to ship them to the Lions Club in Edmonton, who recycles them, classroom support teacher AnneMarie MacDonald said it doesn’t matter how much money the project raises.

“We’re teaching the kids about good and it’s something that’s student driven, so how can we negate something that’s student driven when it’s got such good intentions?” MacDonald said. 

Though cans are 600 times more valuable than the tabs, MacDonald said the school didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes by collecting them. “We look at other organizations that really depend on collecting those pop cans especially the graduates in this community for grad and for scholarships and stuff,” she said. 

Laurie Hoosier, a social worker from the Pediatric Diabetes Education Centre at the Stollery Children’s Hospital in Edmonton, said the program has helped raise more than $100,000 in the last 13 years (equal to about 600 million tabs).

The money, she said, goes to families who have difficulty covering the cost of juvenile diabetes treatment. 

“The pull tab project has two purposes, one obviously for fund raising but also to enable children to find a meaningful way of sharing their experience with diabetes with their peers and classmates,” Hoosier said. “It’s very meaningful to the young people who get involved.” 

But is it a good idea to encourage children to drink pop? “We’re not encouraging children to drink pop, we’re encouraging them to bring whatever tabs they have, because people do still drink pop,” Hoosier said. “And you can drink diet pop versus sugared pop, there are also juices and other products that are sold in containers that have tabs and if you go to the grocery store you’ll find them.”

And as Allan Nugent pointed out, kids with juvenile diabetes can’t drink pop any ways, so they’re essentially stuck on the sidelines watching friends produce the tabs. Nugent is the member of the Riverside Lions Club in Edmonton who collects the tabs and takes them to the recycler. He collects them up from different organizations until he has about 200 lbs. (or about 300,000 tabs), then remits them for about $60.

Nugent admitted that the tabs are relatively worthless. “In a matter of speaking, yes,” he said. “They are very light and take a lot to get. It’s more of an intrinsic value.” He said when a person is asked to save their pop tab, they’re likely to ask why, and therefore the initiative helps spread the word about juvenile diabetes.

“Not all fundraisers can raise millions of dollars, I’m afraid,” Nugent said. “The way I look at it, it’s better than nothing, we are making some contribution.”