From modest beginnings, a Maryland council’s charity scrap drive becomes a community staple

By Elisha Valladares-Cormier

7/1/2024

Source

A group of Maryland Knights established a scrap metal drive in 2006 hoping to provide small financial grants to Knights in need. The program has since grown in popularity and in the past year alone raised more than $28,000 for dozens of local charities.

“The beauty of it is anyone can donate,” said Grand Knight Bill Traube of Our Lady of the Valley Council 11703 in Middletown. “We’re not asking for people to take money out of their pocket, just what they’re throwing away.”

Traube and a few other volunteers began the drive to benefit an assistance fund for members of Holy Family Catholic Community and Council 11703. It started small but began growing exponentially when Traube — inspired in part by Pope Francis’ encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si’ — brought the idea to a group of representatives from different Middletown churches.

At first, “they thought I meant just aluminum cans,” Traube said. He encouraged the group, called the Middletown Ministerium, to think bigger: “I told them this is about creating something the entire community can support.”

The Ministerium got behind the project in 2018, and now Knights and volunteers from various churches collect scrap metal in the parking lot of Holy Family Church almost every Sunday. The donations — ranging from small electronics to large appliances — are brought to a barn to be meticulously disassembled and organized over several days.

Most of the sorted metals are sold at a local facility about once a week; a large dumpster with steel is picked up every six weeks or so. Donated items that are still usable, like tools, are sold at a garage sale three times a year.

Since 2019, the scrap metal drive has raised about $105,000 to support 30 local charities and community organizations. Its reach has also grown — donors come from several local counties, even Pennsylvania and Virginia. The drive’s proceeds always go to groups that directly support the communities that contribute.

“A lot of churches talk about the three T’s: time, talent and treasure,” Traube said. “Well, they never talk about the fourth T — trash. What gets thrown out in the trash can help somebody else, in addition to the environment. The concept is so simple, and I hope more councils can enact programs like this.”

*****

ELISHA VALLADARES-CORMIER is the associate editor of Columbia and a member of Sandusky (Ohio) Council 546.