Collecting pull-tabs sends children to school

Coca-Cola Foundation Philippines, in partnership with Yellow Cab Pizza Company, launches “Open a Coca-Cola, and help send a child to school today,” a campaign targeted at collecting aluminum pull tabs from Coca-Cola beverages consumed in all Yellow Cab Pizza restaurants nationwide.

When consumers purchase any Coca-Cola beverage sold in aluminum cans, they are asked to remove the aluminum pull tabs, and to drop these in the specially marked Coke 1.5L bottles found in all Yellow Cab Pizza Co. stores. Once the bottles are full, the tabs will be collected and donated to the Philippine Christian Foundation (PCF), an NGO partner of Coca-Cola Foundation which caters to over 400 children in Tondo, Manila, an urban poor community located across the former “Smokey Mountain”.

According to data from the Philippine Christian Foundation, waste picking and recycling remain the main sources of income for the over 6,000 people living in treacherous conditions in the area. Here, methane spontaneously combusts, health indicators focus on TB, pneumonia, child malnutrition, and life expectancy is estimated at only 45-50 years old. Extreme levels of poverty are seen among families where children start working as scavengers as early as 3 years old. Yet combined, families earn a mere PHP 100-200 per day. They have no access to clean running water, safe shelter, health, nor education. Food security is their primary daily concern. Despite many public and private interventions, scores of families remain essentially trapped as waste pickers in the Pier 18 area, subject to the brutal effects of perpetual poverty: hunger, homelessness, and illiteracy.

Through the collection of the aluminum ring pull tabs from the beverages of Coca-Cola in Yellow Cab Pizza establishments nationwide as part of both companies’ Corporate Social Responsibility programs, the project aims to promote the importance of recycling, and more importantly, provides the community with the raw material to make these tabs into beautiful bags. The tabs provide families with an alternative source of livelihood through bag-making - a much better and certainly less hazardous way of providing for their families compared to garbage picking. As the number of bags sold from the project increases, so does the number of women trained in this enterprise, providing the opportunity for a greater number of families to break away from the cycle of poverty. Furthermore, proceeds from the sale of these bags also allows PCF to provide de-worming medicine and closely-monitored feeding programs – critical first steps towards any future academic achievement - to the children. PCF also provides sponsored students with basic necessities such as school supplies, and transportation allowance– without which education would not be possible.

As a testament to the effectiveness of the PCF program, in 2008 PCF Founder Jane Walker was honored as a member of The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) by HRH Queen Elizabeth II of Great Britain, for outstanding charity work in the Philippines.

“At Coca-Cola, we realize that the health of our business is directly related to the health and sustainability of the communities we serve,” says Cecile Alcantara, President of Coca-Cola Foundation. “We are elated to be working with Yellow Cab Pizza Co., in this recycling project which aims to support Philippine Christian Foundation’s mission of permanently improving the quality of life for the poorest Filipino communities.”