Pop-can tabs do benefit charities

Hey Johnston: There are charities that accept pop-can pull tabs as donations. The Ronald McDonald House collects them and uses them to support their programs. I heard of other organizations that also collect them. Can you print the places that take the pop-can tabs?

Answer: Last week, a reader wrote that her family had been collecting those pull tabs on pop cans and had thousands of them. She heard that you could donate these tabs to a charity and the charity used them to buy stuff for the charity.

We said we couldn't find any charity taking the pull tabs and the recycling place was paying 28 cents a pound, whether you turned in tabs or the whole aluminum can.

But it turns out there are places that accept not only the aluminum pull tabs from cans, but also the whole can for their organizations! Now that makes sense to us.

There is also one Eastside charity, National Kidney Foundation in Redmond, that takes just the tabs and not the whole can. That's because there isn't enough room in the office to collect cans, said Pamela Church, program director.

"We get lots of sandwich bags full of pull tabs," she said. They raised more than $11,000 last year from tabs (and cans) in Washington and Oregon. The money doesn't pay for kidney treatment but to support other foundation programs.

Call Church at 425-883-2869 for details.

Julie Delano, program director for the Ronald McDonald House, said people are dropping off pull tabs but the children's charity wants the whole can, not just the openers.

"This is an urban legend that we only want the pull tabs," she said. "I don't know where it started, but it has been around for years."

There are recycling centers that accept cans and tabs and credit the McDonald House, Delano said. Call 800-445-1633 for a location.

Hey Johnston: Do you know anything about a Girl Scout troop on the Eastside that sent National Geographic magazines overseas around Christmas last year? I have a bunch of these magazines and I'd love to do it if they're doing it again. But I don't know how to reach them. Do you have any information?

Answer: This was a Girl Scout troop out of Issaquah that shipped National Geographic magazines to a school overseas. It was so successful that the troop did it two years in a row, according to the Girl Scout Totem Council in Kirkland (425-803-0247).

"It was amazing how many people sent in their National Geographics," a Girl Scout spokeswoman said. "It was a very successful program, but it was also a lot of work."

That Issaquah troop is no longer collecting the magazines and no other troop has stepped up to fill the void. But if we hear of any troop doing it, we'll let you know.

We know that some elementary schools accept old National Geographics for projects, so you might call them. Everyone seems to have a basement full of these magazines because people keep calling us to find out what to do with them.

Any readers with ideas are welcome to chime in.

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