PB woman\u2019s selfless effort to collect discarded items meets with disappointment<\/b><\/br> <\/br>Aluminum can pulltabs. They\u2019re the stuff of urban legends. But, as with many myths, at least some of the information is true. And that makes Pacific Beach surfer Katie Rodrigues happy. She has been collecting pulltabs for almost three years. In that time, she\u2019s collected thousands of them under the misconception that each pound buys a child with cancer an hour of chemotherapy. Rodrigues has ridden her bicycle all over the beach area, stopping to pick up the discarded tabs everywhere from alleys to friends\u2019 barbecue parties. Often, when she returns home, she finds a baggie or two of tabs on her doorstep left by anonymous donors who have heard about her quest. When she amasses too many tabs for her tiny apartment, she turns them over to Ralph\u2019s supermarket in Pacific Beach to be recycled. Only recently, however, she\u2019s learned that recycled tabs do not \u2014 and never did \u2014 pay for chemotherapy or kidney treatment as legend has it. That\u2019s simply a rumor that has circumnavigated the country for decades. Some good-intentioned, but entrepreneurial people are even selling the pulltabs on eBay. The only value of pulltabs is the value they bring from recycling or the value they have for crafts projects. But determined that do-gooders have not been collecting in vain, Ronald McDonald House Charities\u00ae of San Diego has been accepting pulltab donations. The center recycles the aluminum and uses its earnings toward operating expenses. “People, including the Boy and Girl Scouts and Kiwanis Club, bring the tabs to us by the bucketful,” said a Ronald McDonald House staff member. Organizations and businesses like Ralph\u2019s, Al Bar Shriners and Rady Children\u2019s Hospital also turn over their collections to Ronald McDonald House, located at 2929 Children\u2019s Drive. The charity is a “home away from home” for families with seriously-ill children being treated at local hospitals. Not only does it offer 47 bedrooms for overnight stays, but it invites families to come by for breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as to do laundry or take showers. Although the charity asks families who stay over for a $40 donation at check-in and a $10 donation per night, it does not turn away anyone who cannot afford to pay. But recycling tabs is a tough way to earn money. Ronald McDonald House doesn\u2019t accept the full cans because of space and health concerns. It takes a whole van full of tabs to make just $50, according to one staff member. Old Town Recycling said one pound of aluminum is worth only about 30 cents, although amounts vary. And it takes about 1,500 tabs to make up a pound. Although they\u2019re not raking in money on recycling, Ronald McDonald House does not have the heart to turn away well-meaning donors. Instead, it has launched a new program called Pennies with a Purpose. “With recent changes in the value of recycled metal, it takes a lot of time and effort to collect enough pulltabs to pay for a family\u2019s lodging for one night,” according to the charity\u2019s website. “Consider this: 1,500 pulltabs equal about 20 cents and 1,500 pennies equal $15.” There\u2019s also the cost of collecting tabs and storing and transporting them. So the charity is encouraging donations of unwanted pennies and other change instead of tabs. Rodrigues, whose big heart extends to fostering rescue dogs, has already started saving her pennies. But she\u2019s so used to collecting pulltabs that she\u2019s not sure she can stop now. “It\u2019s a fun thing to do,” Rodrigues said. “And it\u2019s for a good cause anyway. At least they are going toward the parents who are helping their kids. They\u2019re keeping their babies close.” There is, of course, the extra benefit of helping to clean up the beach area.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PB woman\u2019s selfless effort to collect discarded items meets with disappointment Aluminum can pulltabs. They\u2019re the stuff of urban legends. But, as with many myths, at least some of the information is true. And that makes Pacific Beach surfer Katie Rodrigues happy. She has been collecting pulltabs for almost three years. In that time, she\u2019s […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":726,"featured_media":272267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"11559","_seopress_titles_title":"Soda can pulltabs aid charity; but not as legend has it","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[11559,11551],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-272266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beach-bay-press","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/726"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.sdnews.com\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}