Lions Clean-Up Day was a big success

by Dennis Dalman

editor@thenewsleaders.com

The 20th annual Sartell Lions Club Spring Clean-Up Day April 25 was a big success, with more than 3,000 pounds of appliances alone collected and several thousand pounds of scrap metal of one sort or another.

None of it would have been remotely possible without the coming together of so many volunteers: Lions Club members, Junior Leo Lions, members of the Knights Lacrosse team, Midway Iron of St. Cloud, Tom Kraemer Inc. of Cold Spring, Central Appliance Recyclers of St. Cloud and – last but not least – the residents of Sartell who paid a fee to have their cast-offs accepted as recyclables.

Throughout the morning, a variety of cast-offs were brought to the Clean-Up Day site in the parking lot of Sartell Middle School. The items included computers, TV sets, computer printers, computer towers, gas barbecue grills, kitchen stoves and refrigerators, fluorescent tubes, aluminum car ramps, flower pots and more. Some of the items, such as the car ramps, were taken by customers who happened to see them at the site.

All of the items delivered and accepted were processed safely through recycling methods. The fluorescent bulbs, for example, are given to Czarnetzki’s Hardware in Sauk Rapids, which kindly agrees every year to recycle them on behalf of the Lions’ good-deed clean-up day.

Money earned from the Lions Spring Clean-Up goes for a variety of good causes: scholarships, eyeglasses, youth programs, creation and improvement of parks, and more. Sartell Lions Community Park, for example, was made possible through local Lions’ fundraisers, such as Clean-Up Day, as well as additional funding from the Lions Club International Foundation.

Typically, a Lions Clean-Up Day nets at least $2,000 to help finance local good deeds.