A hundred or more vendors crowded the streets of Denison Saturday as the annual Fall Festival brought thousands of visitors to Main Street.
All through downtown, white-haired women, some wearing blue jeans, bald grandfathers wearing khaki knee length shorts, children of all sizes and shapes and of both genders, walked, along with their parents, from one canopy to another to look at the wares displayed.
Visitors could choose from jewelry likely to have been gleaned from a dozen estate sales, wooden yard signs cut and painted by hand, bird houses made from giant gourds and decorated t-shirts and dozens of other offerings. At one pavilion children made masks and at yet another, the Denison High School Art Club painted children’s faces, transforming them into tiny lions, tigers or bears.
At the Denison Service League’s Bargain Box, at 418 W. Main Street, a steady stream of lookers came in to examine clothing, household knickknacks and other goods. Janet Ciaccio, volunteer manager of the store, said all the women who work in the store are volunteers. She said she and other active members of the League view their work at the Bargain Box as a ministry, a way to give back to a community that has given them so much.
Around the corner from the Bargain Box, the League’s POSH PICKIN’S store was filled with upscale items that included a love seat, several sets of good china, and novelty items sold on consignment. “It only happens once a year, on the day of the festival,” Ciaccio said. “People who donate items to POSH PICKIN’S get 50 percent of the sale and the League gets the rest.”
In addition, League members stationed outside the store accepted donations for chances to win prizes that included a dinner for eight at a local restaurant and a trip for two to an exotic destination. “We’ve done really well with the donations,” one of the volunteers said.
In a telephone interview Friday, Barbara Faris, an active member of the group, said the League raised more than $31,000 last year, distributing it among 25 community service organizations.
A full list of organizations that received funds from the Denison Service League is available in the League’s 2011 yearbook.
In the back parking lot at the Denison City Hall, Joan Meeks, founding partner of Electronic Waste Disposal, worked with volunteers throughout the day to collect electronic waste. Items brought to the collection station included television monitors, computer monitors, computers, microwaves and smaller electronic items. Just before noon, a truck loaded with donations left for the Dallas EWD warehouse. Volunteers waited for the next truck to arrive from Dallas to be loaded as people drove up in pickups and cars to drop off no longer useful electronics.
Meeks, who said she has been in business for 10 months, said the business is going so well that it is two quarters ahead of what she and her business associates predicted. She said the business of recycling electronic equipment is expected to grow to a $5 billion business by 2014, but that it is possible that it will reach that figure before then.
“Businesses are mining landfills now for these things,” she said.
She said profit is not the only reason for the interest in reusing, reducing and reselling electronic components. “This stuff is full of very harmful stuff, lead, mercury and cadmium and other elements that can leach into the ground and into ground water and cause birth defects and cause people to get sick. We want to get rid of it so that no one will be hurt.”
Meeks said it is important to her for people to know that her company does not ship any waste outside the country. She also said that people are frequently worried about donating computers because they fear their data will be removed from the hard drive. She said they wipe every hard drive clean before they do anything else with it.
Electronic equipment that is resold is tested for functionality before it is sold, she said. She said the profit margin for EWD is similar to that of grocery stores, which, if published reports are correct is between three and five percent.
Richard McGowan, who was at the site as a volunteer, emphasized that collecting the electronic equipment is part of the Keep Denison Beautiful program.
Meeks said that because Denison has the KDB program, her company accepts electronic equipment without charging a fee at special times during the year.
“Ordinarily it would cost you $15 to get rid of one of these old TVs,” she said. “But we have this arrangement with KDB and we are very proud of that group for the work it does.”
