The Fairchild Medical Center Auxiliary is collecting tabs from soda cans to help raise money for dialysis patient treatment.

The Fairchild Medical Center Auxiliary is collecting tabs from soda cans to help raise money for dialysis patient treatment. The tabs are taken to the Rogue Valley Dialysis Center in Medford, Oregon, which then sends them to be recycled. The money generated by the recycling goes into the Rogue Valley Dialysis Patient Trust Fund, which provides confidential emergency assistance to dialysis patients in southern Oregon.

Dialysis is the process of removing excess water, solutes, and toxins from the blood in people whose kidneys can no longer perform those functions naturally.

The effort to collect the tabs stopped a few years ago because there wasn’t a volunteer available to take the tabs to Medford. FMC Auxiliary volunteer Robin Watson cleared up a longstanding rumor about how the tabs help dialysis patients. She explained that many people incorrectly believe that a certain number of tabs equates to a certain number of free minutes on a dialysis machine. That is not the case.

The Rogue Valley Dialysis Patient Trust Fund is a publicly supported charity developed under the IRS code, Watson noted. “We all want to help people,” she reflected, and collecting the aluminum tabs gives people an easy way to do that. Asked why just the tabs are collected as opposed to the whole can, Watson stated that the tabs are pure aluminum, while the cans are not, necessarily, making them easier to recycle.

Ronald McDonald House, another charity that generates some of its funding through recycling can tabs, also notes that storing tabs is easier and more hygienic than collecting whole cans.

Watson shared that Jean Krueger, a “fairly new” member of the FMC Auxiliary, “stepped up and is spearheading” the project. Watson remarked that she is impressed with Krueger’s proactivity and is happy to see the tab collection get going again.

Collection of the tabs will be an ongoing project. “We’ll do it as long as there’s interest,” Watson said. She also stated that anybody can take the tabs to the Rogue Valley Dialysis Center – a person does not have to be an FMC Auxiliary volunteer to do so.

Watson suggested that people put the tabs in plastic baggies when bringing them into FMC, where they can be dropped off at the front desk.