A New Year's Commitment: Pop Tabs

I've written about collecting pop tabs before. As this New Year rolls on, I want to re-address the topic and share a little more information with you all.

Ronald McDonald House charities have established houses all over the world, mostly in larger cities with significant children's hospitals. These houses are set up to provide lodging to families with a sick or hospitalized child. Most of them charge on a sliding scale (and usually no more than $10 per night) and they provide all the necessities you could need during such a difficult time. It is an amazing organization that relies heavily on the generosity of sponsors and donations.

I want to encourage all of you to commit to help this year. And here's why...

• Collecting pop tabs is ridiculously easy. You can find them on beer, juice, soda, and diet drink cans. You can also find them on soup and pet food cans. Removing these tabs does not interfere with recycling the rest.
• The tabs can be turned in at numerous places. Many McDonald's restaurants accept them, the children's hospital will take them, the actual RM House will take them, and lots of schools have ongoing collections going.
• Every little bit helps.

Consider this...

It takes 1,267 pop tabs to add up to one pound of aluminum. One pound of aluminum sells for about 40 cents. Yikes. But, even given that, last year alone, here are the amounts a few cities raised just on pop tab donations alone...

Colorado Springs: $3,000 Kansas City: $19,600 Milwaukee: $20,038

Since the pop tab program began in 2000, over 4 million dollars has been raised for Ronald McDonald House charities. I find that amazing.

It is so important to me that I share this information. I would love to know if any of you are already collecting pop tabs or if any of you are willing to commit to start. It is a cause near and dear to me since we stayed in a Ronald McDonald House for 3 1/2 months after our little girl was born. But, even with that, I know there are friends and family of mine who are not currently saving their pop tabs. Which makes me wonder if people who don't have a personal story would even bother...

I already save them (though I didn't know about the soup tabs before doing the research for this post!) so I'm committing in 2009 to tell as many people about it as I can.

Please feel free to ask me any questions or share any concerns in the comments! I'll do my best to respond to anything you throw my way.

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For more ideas on how to do things the frugal way, please visit Crystal's Biblical Womanhood every Friday!