Save Those Toilet Paper Tubes

I've been in this crazy business for a long time and have been asked to help out in many ways but today's request is a first. When I got to work this morning there was an e-mail from Jill Reffett, the Area Director of Special Olympics Illinois. Jill is in charge of hosting the Special Olympics Young Athletes event on May 10th. One part of that event will be the Opening Ceremony where children from the Early Childhood Center will be holding tissue paper torches as part of the ceremony. The torches will be made with paper and those toilet paper tubes we all see when someone removes the last sheet of paper off of the roll. It's not like Jill needs 50 or so of these. She actually needs over 700 of these tubes by May 5th. After we talked about this request this morning on the air , I took the liberty to contact the Charmin, Northern, and Kimberly-Clark headquarters to see if they could help out. They all have a donation process that takes a few weeks to be approved which would make the deadline for collecting all 700 plus tubes by May 5th impossible. So I thought, perhaps I could go directly to the paper mills that make the tubes and ask them. Guess what, Charmin, Northern and Kimberly-Clark all make their own. I checked on line and found a few paper mills in Missouri and Illinois but they don't make those tubs. I did find several that make them in China. I'm not sure that will work either. I tried, so now I am asking you to save those tubes when you get to the last sheet and bring them by the Special Olympics Illinois office on the 5th floor of the W.C.U. Building at 510 Maine Street in Quincy. If you collect several of them you can call 223-3862 and they will come by and pick them up for you. If you want to know how to help out even more, just eat more food.