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Community Corner

Organizations Come Together to Help the Environment and a Number of Charities

Residents can clean out their closets for The Great Donation Day.

Two Elmhurst-based organizations are joining forces to give the community the perfect opportunity to get rid of unwanted goods, not only to help the environment but also to help people in need.

Residents can bring their items to Beren's Park's east parking lot from 7:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Friday, June 3, for The Great Donation Day. The event is presented by Elmhurst Unit District 205 PTA and the Elmhurst Cool Cities Coalition, a coalition of local organizations, business leaders and citizens who work together to achieve the goals of the Sierra Club Cool Cities program and the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement.

The Sierra Club’s campaign encourages city leaders and residents to put into place energy solutions to save money and to construct a clean and safer future. 

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Residents are encouraged to bring gently worn shoes, cell phones, pop tabs, batteries, eye glasses, ink cartridges, books, musical instruments and school supplies. Reusable items will be donated to charitable organizations, such as Share Your Soles and Souls for Africa, Lions Club and Ronald McDonald House Charities.

With assistance from West Chicago’s Unitec Recycling Corp., the coalition will handle the recycling of computers, fax and copy machines, phones and other electronics. In addition, the Wilmington-based Shred X will be there to shred documents for free.

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Before the event, students from 10 District 205 schools including Bryan and Sandburg middle schools and Field and Lincoln elementary schools, will clean out their desks to donate gently used school supplies, said Barbara Lonergan, Emerson Elementary School’s Go Green Committee chairman. Some of the donations will help the district’s students in need, and some will go to Schools Count Corp., a Mokena-based nonprofit that gathers many types of items for schools. Recipients have included Chicago Public School students, as well as those affected by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

The Great Donation Day’s dual purpose is to collect items for charitable organizations and keep unwanted things from going to landfills, Lonergan said. The event began at Emerson the last day of school in 2010.

Both the Charitable and Go Green committees have representatives from most District 205 schools. The Go Green chairmen work as a team and share information about their efforts in their schools, Lonergan said.

For a few years, the coalition was doing a similar collection of unwanted items for the Elmhurst Green Fest, where exhibitors and speakers talk about the environment. Since the fest is on hiatus, the coalition and District 205 PTA members decided to combine the collecting efforts, she said. 

Lisa Gerhold-Dirks, a coalition member and Hawthorne School Go Green Committee chairman, said people are becoming more conscious about disposing items.

“I think more and more people are thinking about what can or should be done with things that they no longer have a use for, besides putting them in a trash can headed for a landfill,” she said. “This event will enable reuse of many items and recycling of others. The electronics collection is particularly important, because computers and TVs have hazardous materials in them that can do harm in a landfill by leaching these materials back into the environment.”

Last year's event was a success, Lonergan said, but this year it's really taken off.

“It was a very well-received event, so much so that other schools who have heard about the event decided to participate,” she said. “Having 10 schools in the second year participating in this event is really a huge testament to the success last year.”

Gerhold-Dirks is excited about the partnership with District 205.

“I think the idea of joining forces with the schools is not only good for the environment but good for area charity organizations,” she said. “That‘s the best part of this event. Helping the environment and helping others get supplies they need goes hand in hand a lot of times. Finding thoughtful ways to reuse things is important to reducing our community's impact on the earth. As more local collection events take place, reusing and recycling is getting easier for people.”

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