My great-uncle Andy, before he died, went a couple times a week for kidney dialysis. I remember growing up, we’d all collect our soda tabs, because they could be used to buy time on the dialysis, and somehow alleviate the costs.

A good friend of mine is in the hospital right now with shot kidneys, and is having to undergo dialysis treatment. Discussing it with a coworker, he mentioned that he used to collect the soda tabs when he was young, too. Now that we’re more mature (yeah, right), we both realized that the story had all the markings of an urban legend.

So, we scoured the Internet, and found out that our suspicions were correct. There’s an article on The Straight Dope, and one on Snopes, both explaining that the stories are false, and giving a little background info.

From the Snopes article:

A million pull tabs have a recycle value of just under $300 U.S. And that’s before you factor in what it costs to collect, store, and transport them to a recycling center which will pay cash for them. When you consider the time and effort it takes to collect a million of anything, it’s a wonder anyone would go to all that trouble for a mere $300. Far better to ask everyone you know for a penny in place of each pull tab they would have given you — at least then when you were done done collecting your million, you’d have $10,000 to donate to your charity.