Here’s an unfortuante byproduct to what may have begun as an earnest environmental action. McDonalds was encouraging the recycling of aluminum cans. To offer credit for each can, to calculate a donation they intend for the Ronald McDonald House, McDonalds asks that you detach the flip-tops and collect them in a cute Ronald McDonald cardboard house.
Here’s what happened. People began recycling just the flip-tops. “They’re more important to recycle than the cans, apparently. Must be something about the density of the aluminum in the flip-top.” Uhuh.
Not My Tribe
The Myth of Middle Ground
Eric! You hide this stuff from me!
To clarify, the Ronald McDonald house, after it’s founding, has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with McDonald’s! Oh my God. Such astounding ignorance! It is a nonprofit organization, nationwide, that houses and feeds for free, or nearly free, families from outlying areas with critically ill loved ones in a hospital far from home.
Once again, premature babies in the NICU for months whose parents live in La Junta can stay at the Ronald McDonald house for weeks on end to cuddle their preemie, skin to skin, thereby hastening the healing process and facilitating bonding. So can someone who’s sister is dying of cancer, whose mother has had her hip replaced, whose husband is struggling with emphysema.
Another philanthropic organization that I am involved with, along with my sixteen-year-old daughter, is National Charity League. We spend many hours, mothers and daughters together, making meals and baking cookies so the people staying at the RM House can feel like they are in a homey loving environment. We also decorate the house for holidays and, yes, collect pop tabs so the director of the house can have a little extra cash to help out her temporary residents, whatever their needs may be.
Eric, I think you spent way too much time gulping Sprite in the South China Sea with your arrestingly beautiful belle de jour to have a single clue about how the world really works.
But keep making fun of us. It just gives me a forum to bring attention to the things that matter in our fair city. And how people who actually care to can make a difference.
Note to readers: If any of you have a serious addiction to Diet Coke or Bud Light or Red Bull or anything else served in a can, please do save your pop tabs. The Ronald McDonald house, located very near Memorial Hospital, would be very happy to receive them. You don’t even have to call. Just leave them in a bag on the doorstep.
And I love it when you take the bait. You prove my point, thinking that “the [Ronald McDonald House] director can have a little extra cash” by recycling a bunch of pop tops. I believe this is leading many people to think if they’ve popped the tops, they can throw out the can, as they’ve done their TOKEN bit for Earth Day.
The pop-top collection program is meant to give you credit for the cans you recycle, in the same manner as a Proof-of-purchase proves your purchase. You can recycle your cans, and record the deed by detaching the pop-top and submitting it for good credit. Pop-tops in RMcDH represent a currency that can buy you exemption of volunteer hours for example, credit toward qualifying as a do-gooder. I’m not criticizing the big RMcD House and the good it does, but rather this little cardboard RMcD house. It fosters a disinformed notion that the pop-tops are more important to recycle than the cans. People conclude, logically perhaps, that aluminum recyclers themselves prefer just the small pop-tops rather than the unwieldy aluminum cans.
Now, if the do-much-good Ronald McDonald House has really nothing to do with its garbage-spewing, do-much-evil Ronald McDonald fast-food chain namesake, it should change its name! The fact is it generates enormous goodwill for McDonalds and their dim-witted mascot. I hate it when people are distracted from seeing McDonalds as the despicable goons they are.