MAPLETON , Maine – The Cub Scouts of Pack 170 Mapleton spent performing what has become an annual day of clean up.
Calling it the “Garbage-a-thon,” the members split up into small groups armed with picks and trash bags and walked the edge and ditched of many roads in Mapleton picking up the trash that accumulates throughout the winter.
Spurred on by numerous corporate and individual sponsorships, the boys worked most of the day gathering the trash and bringing it back to the Town Office where the highway department provided a large dump truck to collect the trash.
According to Adam Rider, Pack 170’s leader, the goal for 2007 was to beat last year’s record of completely filling the dumb truck.
“It’s really amazing to see these boys lugging everything from tires tossed into the woods to larger pieces of furniture that someone decided was better thrown into the ditch than disposed of properly, Adam said, we have discovered that the members of the pack get a real sense of pride and accomplishment when they see the culmination of their efforts at the town office. They have fun and they get a chance to do something really valuable for the town.”
The funds raised by the pack members’ sponsorships will be split between support of the pack and individual Scout costs like summer camp, day camps, uniforms and equipment needed. By the end of the day, the scouts in the Garbage-a-thon did manage to completely fill one of the town’s dump trucks and pile lots of tires next to the truck.
The scouts covered over 11 miles of Mapleton’s roads, filled over two dozen garbage bags, picked up one freezer, and had lots of fun doing it.
