SIDNEY — What do a clothes dryer, a football and a swimming pool have in common?
The support they give each other thanks to two local scrap metal drives.
Since 2005, Steve Woodruff and Craig Brown, in Botkins, have managed a drive that funds the Botkins Community Swimming Pool.
Since 2011, the Fort Loramie Football Boosters have collected scrap and used the funds it generates to back the high school football program.
Besides subsidizing the community activities, the drives get metal trash off the streets and out of town.
“One of the guys in our group was looking for fundraisers,” said Ryan Egbert, of rural Fort Loramie, about how the movement began there.
The Botkins initiative grew out of an already-existing aluminum can-recycling project.
“We had a large-item pick-up for the village,” Woodruff said. They set up a dumpster and invited people to drop off their rusted pots and pans and broken appliances.
“We got a lot of lids and grills with busted legs,” Woodruff said. So many that Brown used one his business’s flatbed trucks to haul them to metal recyclers.
The idea for an ongoing drive was born.
Both villages have drop-off points; although Egbert and Woodruff are willing to pick up items, depending on what they are. In the early days of the Botkins drive, organizers told residents they could leave their metal items at the curb for pick-up.
“But people were stealing our scrap,” Woodruff said.
In Botkins, the men will take any metal that doesn’t have freon in it, which means they don’t accept refrigerators or air conditioners.
That’s not a problem in Fort Loramie, but there, the boosters, like the Botkins drive, don’t accept televisions.
Otherwise, neither group is intimidated by donations.
When asked about the wierdest thing Woodruff had come across, he recalled a particular gas grill.
“(It) had a family of racoons living under the lid. That was rather startling to me,” he said. “We get calls all the time: ‘I’ve got a piece of farm equipment…’ We cut it in half in the field and winched it onto the truck. We get thousands of coat hangers. We traded a vehicle once for a pool membership. We ended up scrapping it out. I picked up seven car doors once from someone who does auto body repair.”
Egbert, too, has stories of odd items.
“One of the early ones was a 1,000-pound tow motor. And we removed barn siding off a barn in Jackson Center. Then there were a couple of house trailers. We tore them down and removed all the metal and moved the scrap wood away. The thing I hate is fence and bed springs. If they get tangled together, they’re hard to load,” he said.
They both get lots of patio furniture, washers, dryers and dishwashers.
Scrapping isn’t as lucrative now as it used to be. Still, the practice provides enough funding to make it worth the while.
Woodruff said they raise about $5,000 a year, 20 percent for the pool’s operating budget. Expenses are lessened by help from the village in hauling.
“Without the village’s help, the scrap metal drive could never be what it is. It’s a service to the community,” he added.
The football boosters in Fort Loramie started off with a bang, garnering more than $32,000 in the first year. The 2012 take was significantly less: $1,226. Since then, profits have come in at $2,000 to $5,000 annually.
That’s been enough to buy and install bleachers, purchase uniforms, pads and helmets, put lights on the field and spruce up the scoreboard, among other projects.
The drop-off point in Fort Loramie is along S. Main Street. There is a white building between Wagner’s grocery store and the Fort Loramie Trading Post. Donors can leave scrap items on the concrete pad behind the building. For information, call 937-726-6383.
The drop-off point in Botkins is at Brown Industries along W. South Street. For information, call 937-538-6342.
