The Dover Millionaires would like to remind everyone the Tyrone Elementary School children are continuing to collect can tabs through the end of the month for the Ronald McDonald House in Pittsburgh.
Area residents are asked to help by saving tabs for children to take to school.
The group has been collecting the tabs off of aluminum cans for about seven years now, averaging around 2,500 pounds of tabs each year. These tabs help defray the costs of housing family members of patients at Children’s Hospital.
Dover Millionaires President, Don Miller, said the group got the idea to collect tabs from a group of race fans from Towanda, Pa.
“They brought us tabs while we were in Dover,” said Miller.
After that, the group began organizing their own tab collection here in Tyrone. Last year, the group decided to enlist some help for the project and asked Tyrone Area Elementary students and teachers to participate in the collection. Students were asked to save can tabs and bring them to school. Five-gallon water jugs have been set up in each homeroom for students to deposit their tabs. Preschool through fifth-grade students began collecting tabs earlier in the year and will continue throughout April.
Together, the school collected over 1,000 pounds of tabs last year.
Once collected, the tabs are turned in for scrap weight and the money is forwarded directly to the Ronald McDonald House. Miller explained this amounts to about $525.
Miller said, “We appreciate the help from the teachers and administration for letting us do this.”
He added that collecting that many tabs really adds up. There are approximately 1,263 tabs in one pound. The 1,000 pounds collected at the school last year contained just shy of 1,400,000 tabs.
This is the second year the group has included the school in the collection process and Miller said they hope to continue working with them every year.
As an added incentive for the students, the Dover Millionaires offer a pizza party for the homeroom that collects the most tabs in each grade.
Mrs. Jeanine Fries’ fourth grade class collected the most tabs overall last year with 111.40 pounds.
Parents are asked to save tabs at home and work to send with their children to school.
Next month, the tabs will be collected and the results will be tallied to see which class has collected the most.
“We would like to say thank you in advance for all of your help,” Miller said.
